Encore
by Farla
Summary: Trevor's surprised to find the afterlife apparently involves finding himself outside of Gresit, back in time to slog through the fight with the Night Hordes and Dracula again. He can't say he never sinned, but enough to deserve a personalized Hell? Why can't he get to just be dead like everyone else? (Netflix version.)
1. Encore

Trevor finds himself on his hands and knees in the dirt, the taste of vomit on his tongue and distant pain everywhere else that said he'd gotten the shit beaten out of him but was too blessedly drunk to feel it properly.

None of these things makes sense. The only possibility is - he shoves his hand into his mouth, then splutters from the muck that brings. Yeah, no, that was fucking stupid. He couldn't have been turned and turning didn't screw up people's memories, he's pretty sure.

He staggers to his feet. He's cold. It's dark. He is too shitfaced for mysteries. There's a tavern behind him. He definitely was just in a fight there. Getting out of here is the best option. He'll pass out somewhere quiet and tomorrow he can try to find -

Trevor spits out a laugh. No one. There's no one.

But there's still monsters to fight, and he'll be damned if the last Belmont freezes to death in a ditch instead.

The last Belmont needn't have worried, it turns out. The night is miserable but warmer than it has any right to be, and when the dawn comes he sees flowers sprouting amid the snow, like it's early spring instead of late autumn.

And he hasn't worn this cloak in some time. Or the whip.

"What the fuck!" he shouts at the sky. God doesn't answer, so he continues, "If this is - if this is Purgatory, I was fucking well purified already! I was pissing sacrament! What more do you fucking want!" When there's still silence, he adds, "I can wait all fucking day!" A bird shits on his head.

And it turns out his stomach hasn't figured out they're dead. It twists in on itself like it's got teeth in a demand for breakfast and Trevor... He supposes he doesn't want to stand around and get more shit on him.

When is this? Is it any time in particular, or is he just supposed to spend eternity wandering in and out of stinking bars? Is that, of every fucking thing he's done, what God's taken issue with?

...It was sloth of a sort, he supposes. But under the circumstances it sure seems fucking petty. He kept walking, didn't he? And a bar brawl wasn't particularly slothful, so why start there when mostly he'd just passed out quietly.

It's when he reaches Gresit it all suddenly clicks into place.

It's later in the day than when he arrived the first time, the real time when it actually happened. The demons have already retreated. But the rest is just how he remembers Gresit.

And that means Sypha and Alucard are somewhere underneath.

So he makes his way through a fucking shit pipe, again.

On the other end of the pipe is supposed to be a sleeping guard. Middle aged, clean-shaven. It'd meant he could get into the city without having to knife anyone.

Instead, Trevor finds a spear aimed at him by some bald geezer with a scraggy white beard. "Well," he says. "Fuck me. I'd been happy to go in the front way, y'know. If it wasn't barricaded. Against flying monsters." It won't even be hard to throw a dagger and take this pathetic excuse of a defense down. But what's Trevor got to fear, exactly? Getting speared through his unreal chest?

To his surprise, the spear tilts away again, the butt coming to a rest on the flagstone. Bit of a disappointment. "What brings you to our fair city," the man says, and Trevor can't tell if the flatness is exhaustion or sarcasm.

He'd gone through all the trouble, crawled through shit to get into a hellhole of sobbing victims and fly-ridden entrails and the sure knowledge that those demons would be swarming back that night, for some dried goat.

And just. Just fuck it. "The story of the sleeping soldier," Trevor says. "Here to put a boot up his ass."

He's not sure what he's expecting to get out of that - anger and maybe a stabbing for his flippancy, derision and mockery at the claim he'd be the one to do it, perhaps the kindness of an eyeroll and 'move along' for a madman. But not hope.

He bites back a groan. Well, he's got no one to blame but himself for that one. He'd seen it play out already, he knows the desperation and he knows how fast people switch allegiances when nothing's worked yet. And maybe. To be charitable. Maybe people were waiting for anyone to propose a solution that wasn't a goddamn lynching. He straightens up because Belmonts don't slouch, tells the man, "It won't be until after the night's attack. Those will have to be fought off but I'll help with that. But there needs to be holy water, as much as possible." He never got the priest's name, barely got a look at him in the dark. "Could you pass that along? Get someone on it?"

"I... I don't know that the men of the Church would listen to me. They're saying..."

"I know what they're saying. It won't happen." Trevor claps him on the shoulder, says in his most confident voice, "Anyone who refuses to help, they couldn't bless the water if they wanted. Try the deacons until you find one who will. And start gathering salt. Alright?"

The old man nods so hard he almost falls over, drops the spear on the ground, and runs into the city.

Trevor picks up the spear and sets it against the wall. Balance is shit on the thing.

His stomach grumbles again. If he doesn't need food to live, is that gluttony? But he was never eating so he wouldn't starve, now was he? You eat because you're hungry.

"It wasn't even good goat," he tells God. "You got a problem with what I do, you shouldn't be making me do it."

It's not that bad either, though it's hard to be objective when you're hungry. This time, though, the woman doesn't pick up his coin after giving him the strip of dried meat. "You the one Elias was talking about? You here for the Speakers?"

A Speaker, at least. And he supposes he'll have to stop off for her grandfather as well or he'll never hear the end of it. "Not the way you're thinking." And then he says what he hadn't, because it's not like there's consequences for running his mouth: "Don't you people know, it's not just Gresit getting attacked."

"Lot of places have Speakers," she says. "Lot of places let Speakers through."

"Your bishop burned Dracula's wife!" he shouts, more at the sky than her. He's reasonably sure there is no her, anyway, this is all some fucked up puppet theater. "All of Wallachia gets torn apart by demons because that vicious fuck killed so many innocent people there were finally, finally consequences and and anyone believes him when he says killing more innocent people will help?!"

It's amazing how silent a market gets when you've forgotten how loud your voice should be.

"Forget it," he says, doing his best to drag his voice back down to quiet. He's already got his strip of goat and she's probably got enough propriety not to try to yank it from between his teeth.

"You here for the bishop, then?" a man says, and it's not at all a friendly question, but neither is there the energy of menace behind it.

"Some demon rips him apart tonight," Trevor says around the goat. "Doesn't change a thing. This kind of shit isn't stopped with human sacrifice."

"Didn't you say you could help?" another voice demands of him.

"They won't be here tonight if we kill the Speakers," someone else argues.

"If we kill the Speakers and the demons come anyway -"

"The demons come," Trevor interjects sourly.

"- we'll go to God with their blood on our hands."

Is that a message? The last thing he did pissed God off this much? He's pretty sure the last thing he did was die doing his duty, and if God's going to take issue with that, fuck him. "Better to die with demon blood on your hands," he informs the world at large, which, he definitely managed metaphorically even if literally it was probably all his own blood. "Look. I have things to do. I'll be back in time for your bishop to threaten me. After that, anyone who wants to live, gather in the western courtyard." And then, because he's starting to get jumbled about who he's speaking to, about when, he says like a complete idiot, "It'll be okay. I'll be here with you and I know how to handle this."

It turns out this doesn't make desperate people leave you alone and they just end up trailing after you, like goslings who question instead of quack. "Seriously, fuck off!" he shouts. "Believe me or don't, I have a schedule here!"

By the time he stumbles across the priests he's picked up more instead. He's also late, and Sypha's grandfather is staggering after being struck in the head, so plan Resolve Shit Peacefully This Time So The Whiny Goslings Don't Whine More and Maybe Finally Fuck Off is dead on arrival.

It's joyous, the crack of the whip and the snap of the man's wrist and the blood spurting from the shattered stump. Trevor waits silently for the next part. The man howls, "Kill the bastard!" again. The other priest pulls out his cross dagger thing, again.

And why deflect it? Trevor is always letting people smack him, always dodging the first attack or round of attacks, always giving everyone a chance to just stop fucking escalating things. But he already did this dance, already tried to talk them both down, already gave this vicious sadist of a man chance after chance to stop trying to stab him to death, and the guy won't take it. They're going to get murdered by their own viciousness tonight anyway. Trevor skips to the final whiplash to the face, again, and removes his eye, again, because again, God, he knows that's what it takes, it's not just him being bloody-minded.

"I don't like priests," he tells them again. "I mean I really, really don't like priests."

He's relatively certain none of the goslings are quite up for knifing him in the back and, well, so what if they do, right? Is God going to be all, you wrathful piece of shit, striking a man of the cloth while he was in the middle of striking down an elderly unarmed pacifist, now you're in Hell and every time you do that you get stabbed to death? Because fuck anybody who thinks that'll change his mind.

One of the gaggle mutters, "They fight monsters," and God can fuck right off with that shit too, he killed plenty of fucking monsters, he can find the time to take some asshole's hand halfway off too.

"Hey," he tells Sypha's grandfather, taking his elbow to steady him. "I'm here for your granddaughter."

He is not expecting the fear on the man's face and rapidly stammers out, "To help! The prophecy. I'm the Hunter. Belmont." He thumps the crest on his shirt, and that seems to work because the man nods slowly. Trevor continues, "I'll go into the catacombs and bring Sypha back up, she'll be completely ungrateful about it, we'll fight demons and fall down a hole in the courtyard later tonight and bring back your va- the sleeping soldier so he can stake Dracula."

"That is...a very specific interpretation," Sypha's grandfather says.

"I'm having a very specific day."

* * *

To lay some of the cards on the table:

This fic is meant to be canon-compliant. What you saw happen in S1 and S2 happened and you know as much (or more) as Trevor does regarding that. Then more things happened off-camera after the end of S2, which Trevor will do his level best to not get into, and then we come to the start of this story.

My intention is for it to be possible to work out what's happened piecemeal but it'll be explained in full before the end.

And, since I'm already here writing an author's note, l'll add that I appreciate any and all sorts of comments. I think of writing as like a conversation and I welcome hearing people's thoughts whether they're positive or negative. Say literally whatever you feel like.


	2. Sypha

He must step wrong because the floor of the upper catacombs doesn't give way under his feet immediately. Like hell he's walking all over the hallways properly so he jumps up and down until there's a crunch and the stones come apart. At the time he'd assumed it was some sort of trap but that's stupid, isn't it? Falling is only a problem when you're headed up. And this place is supposed to have defenses, plural, but all Trevor met was a single admittedly nasty cyclops.

Who he's about to meet again.

...isn't he?

He can see Sypha in the middle of the room and he crouches down behind a pillar, but minutes tick by without any cyclops.

Shit, is he early? He's early. The last time he'd had that whole thing with the Speakers, the discussion or argument or arguments, then got somewhat lost on the way here, and apparently the cyclops is as shitty at guarding as Alucard is at summoning competent demons or whoever it was that fucked up the mortar because it just will not show up.

He could move Sypha so she's not in the crossfire. But what if he tries to move her and then the cyclops shows up? But what if he doesn't and she gets shattered and he knows it's because he chose not to move her? But what if he does and stumbles and she -

"It already happened," he reminds himself. "It already happened. It already happened when it mattered and this isn't it." But all of it already happened, even that last argument and he'd said no and is that what God's taken issue with, what sort of fucking sin would that be even, is he going to watch her crack in half because _Increase ye, and be ye-_

The cyclops lumbers into the doorway and Trevor bursts out, "Thank fuck!" for the interruption which completely wrecks the ambush plan but who fucking cares.

He is perhaps a bit too frantic, a bit too foolhardy, a bit too focused on trying to kite it to the side, and yes, all his ancestors who managed to get buried must be rolling in their graves that he's so unforgivably sloppy as to get his foot clipped by its gaze in the process of killing it but, first off, his toe will turn back in a minute and second off, he hasn't got toes because none of this is real. Immortal souls can't get chunks petrified.

He catches the statue and he waits for it to turn back into Sypha and suddenly he thinks-

It won't turn back. They're gone. Sypha will stay cold and motionless in his arms and he'll go down and down and down and all he'll find at the bottom is a sealed coffin that will never open for him. That's the point of all this. Beating that into his head.

Only when the stone fades, Sypha opens her eyes.

He hugs her.

She vomits down his back.

Right, that had been a thing.

He's expecting a complaint when he manages to let go of her, given she'd taken issue with him jumping on the statue as part of saving her life and getting buried in a stinking cloak was certainly ruder than that, but she's just staring at him and fidgeting with her robes.

"I uh," he says into silence that he's sure isn't supposed to be there. He points to the crest again. "Trevor Belmont, House of Belmont. You got turned to stone by the stone-eyed cyclops, which." He shrugs. "Does that with its eye. Feeds on your fear. We've got to get back up. Your grandfather's waiting."

She still doesn't say anything. Why is she looking at him like that?

"Sypha?"

She takes a breath, says, "I cannot leave yet. The sleeping warrior is still down here."

"I know, I know. But it'll be faster going straight down from the courtyard."

"There's another entrance there?" That seems to have sparked the life back into her voice.

"Uh," he says again. "Not yet. But there will be. It'll be a rough ride but it'll get us to the bottom in just a few minutes. And you should -" What is he supposed to say? "You should spend time with your family while you can."

"We leave soon, then?"

"Yeah. Yeah, tomorrow morning." He really, really doesn't want to stick around. "Scholar Hunter Soldier, off to kill Dracula."

She looks him up and down, and, okay, Trevor does not exactly look his best but he didn't think he was that bad. "I'm surprised they told you so much."

"They didn't," Trevor tells her. "Fuck, they didn't even say you were a woman. I think..." Yeah, what had been going on with that? They'd barely even wanted to tell him about the first chunk of it. "They were only trying to delay me until you dug up your lazy messiah and came back, am I right? Was that stupid plan your idea?"

"Um," she says.

"Fucking hell, Sypha. Is there something in Gresit that makes people idiots?"

"People don't listen to Speakers!" Sypha snaps back. "They believe their mangled, wrong versions of old prophecies or refuse to believe in it at all! So yes! I thought I'd have to do it myself!"

He puts up his hands. "For the record," Trevor says, not entirely sure what record he's defending himself on, "I didn't believe you for a completely different reason, and, really, I was right. Eventually."

"What are you talking about?"

He shakes his head. "We'll go get the asshole, no arguments from me. But we go back up first. I've got an appointment, then we've got to hustle your family back down here ahead of the mob."

"The mob," she repeats with classic Sypha coolness. He smiles at her and shit shit she did not appreciate that at all.

He forces his face into his best inoffensive expression, and it is pretty damn good he'd say, seven out of ten times he got to go back to drinking, and gives a shrug. "So, getting out of here."

She considers him, then says, "Well? Lead on."

"Right." He starts walking and she trails behind him. It's awkward, not being able to see the person you're traveling with and more so when you're used to them standing next to you. He points around them. "Did you get a look at all this? Those lights?"

She shakes her head. "No, it was dark when I arrived."

"Lot of interesting stuff here. This place is built like Dracula's castle," he tells her again. "A really shitty version, though. Back me up on that later, would you? He'll care if you say so. You can see this place is falling apart. I got here falling through the floor."

"You know what Dracula's castle looks like?"

"Been there twice. It's pretty distinctive. Those glowing lights there, they're powered by circling lightning, which is powered by burning poison water and gears. Same as these warm pipes." He taps one gently. "If they're broken, water sprays everywhere, it's dangerous."

"Oh?" she says. "Are you always that afraid of touching water? That explains so much."

"Har har. Seriously, some of them'd boil you. Or, they'll boil me at least, I can't just -" He waves his hand. "Woosh, ice, you know?"

They reach the second hole. "Speaking of _woosh_," he says. They'd both climbed through the rubble the first time, trying to get back up around Alucard's masonary fuck-ups. Did the cyclops eat her magic too? Was that even a thing that could happen with magic? She never seemed to run out before. "I'm fine climbing, if you want to float up yourself or whatever."

"Why would I float?" she asks him, arms crossed and voice flat.

"Fuck if I know how it works, you're the Scholar."

She glowers at him.

Another note for the family bestiary, apparently, along with turns-out-Sypha's-fucking-touchy-about-being-out-of-magic. Only, of course, it's a bit late for him to add anything. Well, who knows, maybe some future Belmont will summon his ghost one day. "Right. Suit yourself." He starts to make his way back up. After a moment, he hears Sypha climbing behind him.


	3. Salt

He delivers Sypha back to the rest of the Speakers and everyone's happy. "Stay here until I get back," he tells them. "I've got to go get threatened by godly men."

"You're very chipper," Sypha's grandfather observes.

"I've been looking forward to it," he admits. Vainglory's only when you're not right, he's real sure of that one. "It's a lot funnier in retrospect. They're all dead, anyway."

That gets a complaint out of one of the younger Speakers, the helpful loudmouth one who'd originally told him about Sypha. "No, I mean -" Trevor starts. "They die later tonight, all as a consequence of their own actions, and I'll stick with words right now, like you like." Admittedly, the consequence of their actions were mostly going to be getting killed by him in self-defense or stabbed by his inciting their mob back at them but, details. It had basically not been his fault. "And. Silver lining of all this, things do get better for everyone else after demons eat most of the clergy. Like instead of burning Sypha on a stake for knowing magic it'll be called divine favor."

It's quiet enough he can hear the candles sputtering.

"Uh." He looks at Sypha. "Shit. They knew you could use magic, right?" What the fuck is he saying, of course they knew, they're Speakers, they're not all hung up about that, so -

There's a bang on the door. "Belmont!"

"That's early," he says. He turns to answer it but hesitates. "Sypha, forget it, get them into the catacombs by yourself," he orders. The mob could be early too. "You move while they're busy escorting me, then don't go any further than that cyclops corpse, I'll be down to meet you really soon." He jerks the door open, hops across the threshold, and slams it behind him before the assorted priests finish registering what he's doing.

Then they all point sharp things at him, but fuck, God, he wasn't scared by this lot back when he wasn't already dead.

"It is great to see you again," he tells them. "Really. It's going to be more great to see you getting knifed later, but -"

Ow. Getting poked by the sharp things still hurts. Where does everyone get the energy for this? "Hey," Trevor snaps. "You're not going to like it if I can't come quietly."

"You're not in any position to be making demands," the grandfather-beating asshole tells him.

He totally is. Well, was. Not so much now. "Alright, fair," Trevor tells the sky. "Though I think theologically I'm within my rights to at least argue, aren't I?"

"No, you are not. As an excommunicated - "

Trevor pinches his nose. "Wasn't talking to you. And I'm not - I mean you died before that happened, but - Look. Let's just get to the bishop and move this along."

The rest of Gresit should be making themselves scarce. Everyone knows that a lot of priests with pointy things making a fuss about someone doesn't end well for anyone else who gets pulled in either. You put your head down and you pretend you don't see it.

But people are craning their necks out of windows and alleys as they walk by.

Trevor waves and bellows, "Sorry about the delay! I'll be at the western courtyard in - would you stop that!" He twists out of the way of One-eye's knife and kicks the man's feet out from under him. "I am trying to get to your goddamned murderous bishop to be threatened! I'd already be there if you'd get out of my way!"

Apparently that's priest for 'please skewer me'.

He wouldn't say he's particularly great in close quarters. There's plenty of monsters that can turn you to paste in a single blow so it's wiser to fight at a distance. These priests, however, stab and swipe like they expect his only countermove to be cowering. And he's certainly had practice with getting clear. He just has to punch one in the face and he's free of their shitty attempt at encircling him. Breaks the man's nose nicely in the process.

Then it's enough to snap his whip right in front of the pack before anyone can rush forward. They pull back, they try to put up their weapons like it'll defend them against him.

Trevor doesn't want to fight them. Or, well, he does. But wrath's only wrath when it's a disproportionate thing. This is wholly reasonable and proportionate dislike, as illustrated by how he snapped his whip in front of their noses instead of into. If anything, he's got to be careful not to be too reasonable here, wouldn't that be a sin too? It should be. You shouldn't have any right to turn someone else's cheek.

Point is, he's fine with what happens to them. They brewed it up, fair they choke to death swallowing. "Your orders," he barks, "were to march me to the church. Where I'm going. You really wanna make more of it?"

They don't move. He turns his back on them, coiling his whip back up. "What could you even do?" He laughs into the hush of the street. "I'm dead and damned already."

The church's doors are closed, just like they really were. He decides to kick them open. Might as well make an entrance. But the doors are more well-made, or well-oiled, than he expects and the resounding bang of them slamming into the wall on either side is startling.

The head madman isn't there. No, wait...right, he walks in from the side all slow and dramatic but he's waiting for Trevor to get closer. Why do only Trevor's entrances get fucked up? That's unfair.

He groans and walks toward the podium and yes, there the fucker is, walking all calm and cool and in control as if the sky's not falling.

It's so empty in here. It was just him and the bishop. He'd had other things on his mind then, was busy figuring out what was even going on, but… Place barely looked used. The world went to hell outside but there was no one cowering in these walls, no prayers or sobs. There's not even marks of the Night Horde here, weren't any until this final night, and yet, no one sheltered here. His choice? Theirs?

Given what happened it might be the one good decision the shitpile ever made. The whole population packed in here thinking it'd do anything to keep demons out, it'd be like eels hiding in a stewpot.

The man opens his mouth and nope, fuck that. "You're a Biblical sort," Trevor calls out with a smirk. "When this is over, you'll be likened to an apostle of Jesus all over Wallachia, I can tell you that."

The man gives him a curious look. "And yet you are going around stirring up my flock."

"The only difference is, you didn't even need thirty silver to betray your god."

The man opens his mouth but fucking hell Trevor had to listen to this asshole shit words out once already. "All you had to offer me was avoiding a fight and maybe to make me ex-excommunicated, probably if I agreed to be another of your dogs, it was a shitty excuse for a temptation back then and God, what's the point of going through the song and dance again, why would I change my mind now?"

"If you refuse, you'll -"

"I already died, you stupid motherfucker. So did you! But you die first, splattered all over the room here, and I died well. When this is all over, you think people let priests burn more witches? You think they trust the Church at all? Oh no. It's me." He jabs a thumb at himself, at the crest. "I'm the one who cuts Dracula's head clean off his shoulders, me and a Speaker-magician and a fucking vampire! The only priests who survive fall over themselves to kiss my ass, so no, don't need you for that either. I'm in very good standing with the wreck you left of the Church. All while you, Alexi Ciobanu, go down in history as the one to blame for it all. I made sure of it. And I hope the real you, in whatever worse Hell you got dragged to, can hear all this. That acceptable, God? Will you do me that much, at least?"

The man stares at him with a truly ironic amount of horror. "You are utterly mad."

He flips off the ceiling and turns to go. Oh hey, there's a crowd at the door. So, if the priests don't get to come in first, then they don't leave either. Touchy bastards. And are those some of the lay folk beyond? What do those idiots think they're doing.

The bishop starts to sputter. "What do you think you're -"

Trevor raises his voice. "Going to save the good people of Gresit you're blaming for the consequences of you murdering some old woman. Physically save, not spiritually. Hate to step in the shit job you're doing of that," he says, more to the rest of the cutthroats with crosses who are shifting uneasily, like they're finally having second thoughts about standing between him and the door.

He tries to shove one out of his way and the man actually shies back like he'll get heresy on him if Trevor touches his robes. God, they're really that fucking scared of him all of a sudden? Well, he'll take it.

Trevor steps into the afternoon sun. Even with his best squint, the light's doing his throbbing head no favors. "Why are the rest of you here? You've only got a couple hours before the Night Horde shows up!"

Half of them back away and scatter in what may be the direction of the courtyard. The other half are still staring at him. He groans.

He wants to go retrieve Sypha, which he'd prefer to do alone given the whole point of hiding people is not leading a mob right back to them. He spends a moment weighing the pros and cons of sprinting into alleys to try to lose them. It seems unlikely to work and even if he shakes them, the fuss would just attract more wherever he heads.

While he hesitates, a woman calls out, "Are the demons really the fault of the bishop?"

Okay, God, no, it's not that simple: "How many burnings did you all watch?" Trevor asks. "How many people died because the rest of you let it happen, how many people were beaten and persecuted and imprisoned and exiled and tortured? You don't _deserve_ a bunch of baby-eating demons. But you could've done more to prevent it." He's not really sure what the point is there. Alright, he could've done more. He knows that, because he already learned that, and then he already did that. What the fuck is the point of reminding him? And also, "Though, yes, demons are eating babies because the bishop burned one too many innocent people. He killed Dracula's wife so Dracula's killing everyone." So yeah, God, on balance, it was at least mostly the fault of your fucking bishop.

"And if we kill him -" a man starts.

"I won't defend these pieces of shit. I literally will not." He steps to the side, gestures open-palmed at the still-open doorway behind him. If that's what God's driving at, Hell it is. "What they did, what they wanted to make you do, I'm not going to say forgive it. But don't do it because you think it'll save you. He dies tonight to the demons and it means nothing at all. Dracula is even more fucking crazy than your snake-fuckingly crazy bishop and he's not even going to notice. The only way to stop this is to fight back."

"They can't be killed!"

"He can do it if he's really a Belmont," someone else argues. "The Belmonts could fight monsters."

"The Belmonts deal with black magic, everyone knows that!" And as Trevor opens his mouth to explain yet again that they fucking didn't and could people wait to be ungrateful bastards until he's done saving them, the woman continues, "Can you summon your own demons? Is that how you'll defeat the Night Horde?"

Trevor gapes at the crowd. After a minute, he manages, "Salt. Salt kills demons."


	4. Monsters

Sypha is kind of the cornerstone of his plan this time, so of course this time everyone's watching him like starving hawks.

There's more of them than there really were. Back then it'd just been the remnants of the mob, the ones who'd showed up and been there at the right point in his run and then survived the opening swoops of the Night Horde. Now there's…

...everyone already died or lived. He can't change that. He can't change anything.

There's salt and buckets of water that, supposedly, have been blessed, though there's no sign of whoever's been doing it now. Well, Trevor did assault several priests today, it's not much of a surprise the guy's made himself scarce.

Even if it's regular water, Trevor's managed in places where everyone capable of mumbling the words was long dead. He'll handle it.

He examines the square. He fell in around… there, definitely. "You and you, that section's going to cave in later, move left." He waves his hand at them and they scamper to the side. "Do you have whitewash here?"

There's a vaguely affirmative murmur-hum from points in the crowd at that. "Whoever has it, get it, I need to mark off the area so you can stay out of it tonight. I'm falling down there later, no need for anyone else breaking their necks." He waits until a few people separate and run off.

He points to the water. "I'm told this is holy water," he starts, because if it doesn't work he wants to be clear it's not because he's the one who's wrong about monster-fighting. "Holy water burns demons, so I want the ground here as soaked as you can make it. That won't kill them, but it'll hurt them when they land. A distracted demon is one that isn't biting anyone's guts out. To kill them..."

He strides towards the salt and lifts a handful into the air. "To pierce the hide of a demon, all you need is to salt the blade. Salt interferes with their powers, prevents their flesh from coming back together. Salt kills demons."

"How come you can touch it?"

"It's salt!" These fucking people. There really is something wrong with Gresit, unless it's God fucking around directly to see how much more raw stupid insanity needs to be crammed into Trevor's hallucination Hell before he gives up and beats his own skull in on a wall.

Someone else answers with, "He's a revenant, not a demon."

"I'm not a revenant," Trevor clarifies, and then can't stop himself from adding, "And no, salt does work on a revenant. And a revenant would not be helping you because it's _a rotted out lunatic monster_."

Everyone's staring at him like they're not convinced. He. Does. Not. Look. That. Fucking. Bad!

"Revenants can't move in direct sunlight," he tries, and oh, _that_ gets a mutter of acceptance. That they find convincing. He sighs and lets the salt flow through his fingers to return to the pile. "Just remember about salt. Salt doesn't need magic. If whatever priest you got for the water turns out to have just been fucking with us all, it'll do nothing, but if you can taste salt, it's salt and it'll work against monsters. Just salt will be enough for you to win. So!" He gestures at the various jars and jugs. "As soon as the sun starts to go down, you need to apply salt to your weapon. After a few strikes, it'll be worn off and you'll need to reapply it. But it'll only take a few strikes to fight off the Night Horde. They're not like an army of men. They rely on near invulnerability to make up for their low numbers. They won't have that tonight."

He backs up toward one of the more intact buildings and waves his hand. "We'll be taking up position here. Going into the buildings is a trap, the hellfire's worse in enclosed space, so everyone stays out outside, clustering up for defense. Double row of pikes to keep them off people, then those of you with knives rush in once they're skewered. Any demon who keeps its distance, I'll take out myself. Stick the kids in the center. For now, sharpen everything, make sure it's not about to break, and get any extra pikes you can. Ah, there's my whitewash, thank you."

It's actually a pretty big area that's going to cave in, the whole center of the square. Surprising it lasted even this long really with it all hollowed-out underneath. Not like it's a fucking surprise to find Alucard wasn't considering long-term consequences of his stupid decisions here either. Some genius immortal he was.

While most of the crowd is now pouring out the buckets of water or leaving to hopefully find marginally less shitty lumps of garbage metal, as soon as he's done pouring lines on the stonework, people start drifting back toward him. "What about your magic," an older man insists.

Trevor growls, "I don't know magic!" and fuck shit everyone's just jumped back. He sighs, puts his hands down slowly. "What I _do_ is what anyone can do, you just have to know how." And, okay, he figures now that's maybe true about magic, but it's just not the same thing and just because he doesn't have fancy words to explain the exact different between making fire with gestures and willpower compared to grabbing salt or knowing where the heart is on every monster that's got one shouldn't be held against him. Of every possible thing he's ever done wrong in his life God can't think being bad at explaining fancy philosophy shit is what he should've worked on. "You know what, I've got to get her anyway, if you people want to try to learn magic you can take it up with her." He points them back to the rest of the group. "Stay here and draw more water, find wherever the priest's hiding and get him to keep making it. I'll be back with a magician for you."

God, God. The way they look at him. "I'll be back," he repeats. "I'm not going to abandon you."

And maybe they believe that. Or maybe they just think he'll kill them if they insist on following after he ordered them not to, since apparently as a Belmont he's shambling monstrosity that can unmake their souls with black magic. But they stay in the courtyard.

Now there's the question of if Sypha stayed with the others when she can't stand him even more than last time. If Sypha insisted on looking for Alucard without him -

He can't just think, well, she can take care of herself. He doesn't know what's beyond that chamber, he never went any further this way, just that it's whatever stuff Alucard thought would somehow protect him from fucking Dracula. And maybe Actual Sypha would've managed whatever that is anyway but this isn't Actual Sypha because none of this is actually real. If God just - just wants him to find her stabbed to bits in some trap, then that's what happens. Who's he to argue it wouldn't, he doesn't know if Alucard thought spikes are a valid decoration choice for his awful hideyhole, he never asked!

By the time he approaches the cyclops room he's in a dead sprint. He gets there and takes in that yes, twelve poofy blue robed speakers, and then he doubles over and gasps for a bit.

When he can half straighten up he finds Sypha has approached, though not particularly close. "Has something happened?" she asks.

He shakes his head, still gulping at the air. "S'fine. No hurry. I just, wasn't sure, if you'd stayed, or left, and gone deeper, I don't know."

"How could I? I have to go fall down a hole with you."

"Right. Good." And Trevor mutters, "Not used to winning arguments."

"Well!" She claps her hands together. "Shall we do that, then?"

He nods. "But I need you to help with the fight up top first. There's so many and you can make defenses out of the holy water, and, well, they just won't shut about magic." And he should stop there but, "They're so scared."

And Sypha, Sypha says, "Why not send them down here as well?"

"So I can come back to a massacre?" he screams at her, flinging his hand over the rest of the speakers. "They were ready to kill all of you! You - you - you - that doesn't happen! I don't let that happen!"

She stares at him. "Are we supposed to be killed?" she asks.

"No, God, no no I'm not - I will not do this - I -" Trevor clenches his teeth shut and balls his fists and - "Don't say things like that," he pleads.

Sypha steps closer and touches his shoulder, very lightly. "I am sorry. You have helped us very much already."

He shakes his head. And then he crushes down the rest of it as best he can and says, "The plan is to kill as many demons as we can tonight," because he has his fucking job to do.

She nods and starts to head back up the way they came.

They walk in silence for a while. Then she asks, "Do you mind if I ask something else of how things will go?"

"Huh?"

"I have never met someone capable of prophecy," she tells him.

"Oh. You still haven't."

"No?"

"No," he says firmly.

He's not entirely sure what he should say here. Not that that's surprising, he's not entirely sure what here even is or how this is supposed to work. God doesn't just laugh at people for not knowing the future, right? He may not be totally clear on everything but not being able to pull prophecy out of your ass is the normal state of humanity. Unless this isn't about sin it's just about God being an unreasonable cockwart who kicks people while they're down.

He really wishes he had any evidence against that.

Sypha says, "Hrm." Then she asks, "But you are here about the prophecy. And you seem to know a different version of it than the Speakers do."

"It's not really about that," he says. "It's just everyone knows what I'm talking about when I put it that way." And it's not lying, really. He's there because there is a prophecy which means Sypha and Alucard are here because of that prophecy and the fact the prophecy is actually a load of horseshit isn't his fault. "I know exactly the same prophecy you know."

Sypha's face goes red at that, of all things. Well, it is a pretty dumb prophecy. Maybe that was the real reason no one wanted to tell him, they knew how stupid they'd sound for pinning their hopes on it, that anyone with half a brain would take off rather than get involved. Then she insists, "But you know more than that. How would you know to be here, otherwise?"

Arguing his part in this was just a coincidence is futile. Taking credit for coincidence is what prophecy is about. Instead he tells her, "I make a lot of bad decisions."

"I can see that," she says primly. "But you are avoiding the real question."

"Yup." Because sometimes you need to just accept you've dug yourself into a hole and there's no winning.

He can feel the silence bore into him. "Fine, God, I'm a liar, alright? I wasn't thinking and it's easier to agree with people and what the fuck else was I supposed to say, all prophecy's garbage but we've got to go get the guy anyway? That doesn't even make sense! I didn't want to have a whole fight over why we're doing it when we agree what we're supposed to be doing, is that such a huge thing?"

"Ah," Sypha says, as if what he just said was coherent. "You dislike prophecy, then."

"You could say that."

"So you are angry to be part of this one." She pauses. "Is your problem because of God?"

He wishes desperately that Real Sypha was here to handle this riddle bullshit. God has to know he doesn't know how to do this, doesn't he? Why can't God just fucking say what he's so pissed about?

When he doesn't answer, Sypha continues, "I know the Church says many things about prophecy, and that it is often considered the domain of Satan."

It'd honestly slipped his mind. "Oh, right, yeah. No. Not a problem. That whole argument's about who's sending real prophecies. Prophecies aren't real so I don't need to take a side on if it's God or the Devil." Fuck you, God, can't get him on that one.

He's braced for her to rail against him for it, but instead, "I see," Sypha says with an odd delicacy.

"I know you don't agree."

"Yes," Sypha says far too brightly. "The prophecy is why I'm here. I think it is a good thing. Without it, my people and I would have left and missed the chance to find the sleeping warrior."

"Maybe that'd have been better."

"We are all still alive, thanks to you. There is no guarantee we would not have been attacked on the roads by the traveling Night Horde if we'd left before this. And didn't you say you need my help now?"

"I don't _need_ it," he says, and even he can hear the defensive whine of his voice so he stops. "Is your magic working yet? It's fine," he adds quickly, "it doesn't actually matter until nightfall, it's just, if it's back earlier than that you can show people so they don't have to take my word for it and maybe they'll shut up."

After a moment, Sypha answers, "I am capable of demonstrating my magic, if you think that's best."

"Great. Yeah, this should work."

He was expecting the stares at Sypha. What he wasn't is how people's eyes fasten to his boots as he splashes through the holy water soaked square. Do they think even his clothing is evil? The leather's going to light on fire from its sins?

Shows what they know. Even if he had turned Alucard into boots, which maybe he should've, vampireskin shoes wouldn't've burned up any more than his own horsehide ones. Once things are truly dead and departed, they generally stop reacting to holy water. It's one of the ways you can be sure something's actually dealt with and not just pretending.

He opens his mouth but thinks better of telling people that if he was wearing evil boots they wouldn't know and instead goes on to, "This is Sypha. As I guess you all know, she's one of the Speakers you were planning to kill. She was turned to stone by an evil monster but now she's here to do magic for you. Don't call her a witch or she might realize she should've fucked off instead of risking her life for you people."

"You have such a way with words," Sypha mutters, then more loudly, "I will aid you to the best of my ability! I am a magician. I serve no demon and I do no evil." Which, it seems, doesn't matter anyway.

Is that God's point, that everything's really just one colossal joke? That he's chasing his own tail trying to figure out why, as if there's any obligation for his death to be any more fair than his life ever was?

"That means she's not summoning you demons either," Trevor adds. "She can't do that. And if anyone else here thinks they can, don't, why the fuck do you people want more demons. We'll win this with tactics, and knowledge, and her help. Holy water is still holy water when it's frozen solid," he explains to the far too large crowd and shit he didn't realize there even were that many kids left in Gresit by this point fine fuck it he's sorry they're dead he can't do anything about it if God has such a problem then maybe God should've stepped in himself at some point. "That's where Sypha comes in. She can make it into walls of ice. It won't hold long but they have to blast it before they can blast any of you. And we'll kill them first."

They're just staring at him again and he realizes that they probably have no idea what he's talking about. Even Trevor hadn't seen magic like hers in the flesh before. Then there's a gasp because Sypha's hands are glowing and he gets his hand on his whip because this here did not happen and now that everything's laid out maybe they all decide that if it's true the Speakers actually have magic then the bishop's murder plan is worth a try and she won't even be ready _because he told her it works out and she believes him_. People aren't supposed to die because they believe him! They're supposed to die because they don't! He, God he -

Sypha raises a wall of ice to one side. No one throws an ax at her.

Good. That's good, right? It's good.

It's fine. It'll be fine. God's still got so much shit to put him through.

Trevor's had plenty of practice at ordering untrained crowds around and he falls into it easily enough. It's a lot like being a sheepdog, you go here, you go up there, you pack in under the ice because you're useless even by Trevor's embarrassingly low standards and if you're in the open your head's going to get torn off so stay with the flock.

Someone bumps into him and he makes the mistake of eye contact and.

The boy wasn't there during the real fight. Trevor recognizes his face from afterward, dug out of rubble all twisted and sobbing from an arm half chewed off and fucking Alucard backing the Speakers about how boiling water magics it clean when the stump festered anyway exactly like Trevor said it would, every last one did and every last one died and Speakers don't know better than to _chat_ and _ask people's names_ when they're two feet in the grave already, like he wanted to hear any of that, and God, no matter how much bad he did didn't he do good things too, doesn't any of that count for anything at all, how can he deserve being here of all things?

From how terror blossoms across the boy's face a second later, like he's staring into his own grave, Trevor probably did not keep any of that out of his own expression.

He should - well, what should he do, God, should he say no, relax, don't be scared, just because I'm looking at you like I know exactly what a horrible death you get doesn't mean anything chin up it'll all be fine, you're not going to die.

That's a fucking lie, God.

He chokes out, "Stick to the center," before turning on his heel and fleeing like the coward he is, like that's any better.

Trevor doesn't bother asking after the priest, just follows the water back through a broken doorway to find a deacon hiding behind the wall. The man cringes and steps backward as Trevor approaches his corner. "I don't punch people who haven't punched me a couple times first," Trevor says. He peers at the man's face in the gloom. "Oh, it's you," Trevor says. "Then this should actually be holy water." Assuming holy water works in Hell, but these monsters are as unreal as the water so probably. "One less thing to worry about."

"You, ah, can't tell?"

Trevor bends and plunges a hand into one of the buckets. It splashes up his arm. "I'm _not a demon_, so no."

The man nods cautiously.

Trevor turns to go back out and the man speaks again: "Er. Would you be better off remaining inside until the sun finishes setting, though?"

He groans. "What do I have to do to convince you people."

The man puts up his hands placatingly. "It's only, I don't think anyone's left to care about what you are, and it's clear your eyes can't stand the day's light."

"That's the hangover," he grinds out. There is nothing unnatural about the fact the sun's rays stab right through his skull.

The man nods again in the sickeningly agreeable way of people who don't actually believe a word you're saying.

"Is it seriously harder to believe I'm hungover than that I'm a monster?" he shouts. "I'm fucking marinated in booze!" Bad enough he's wrapped in a constant hovering reminder about how much less all of this could hurt, can't it be good for anything?

"You already told them you're dead," Sypha pipes up behind him.

He turns. "What? No, I said I'm not a revenant. Not. Not is the opposite of yes."

"Yes, but people also say you told the bishop you're unkillable because you already died."

"Fuck me, there wasn't supposed to be an audience. Why were they even there?" And he didn't actually say that, exactly. If they were eavesdropping they could've at least done a proper job of it. He turns back to the man. "Come on, shouldn't you know better? You guys do the last rites and funerals and shit, you know corpses, don't you?"

The deacon looks down. "...It would hardly be surprising if a Belmont could not rest, even if you managed to get a Christian burial. And that is doubtful."

Seriously, God? He's just fucked for being a Belmont?

He can't say it's wholly a shock. In a lot of ways he feels like it's something he already knew, in fact. Why wouldn't things work that way, why wouldn't he be condemned to just keep repeating the same toil instead of finally getting to an end, why wouldn't this be what he gets for trying to help? Everyone else gets to die or kill themselves but he just has to keep going forever!

"I'm not a revenant," Trevor repeats.

The man nods. "I assumed a gjenganger. Though you would know better than I."

Oh.

That...that's...more specific.

"If anyone would come back after being murdered… And it can't be a coincidence, you being here now," the man continues. "You've said the Night Horde is because the bishop, because the Church, persecuted those who were in truth innocent. What happened to the Belmonts...it's much the same, isn't it?"

"Won't say people didn't try over the years, but they didn't succeed," Trevor says. His heart pounds in his chest and that's proof enough none of this is real, that he wasn't actually spat up from the grave. He grins. "What sort of Belmont would I be to lose a fight to men?" It wasn't murder. Getting killed and murder aren't the same thing. That's not how that works.

The deacon doesn't answer him.

Knowing you're going to get killed and murder aren't the same thing, God. They're not. It doesn't count.

"So you really think I'm some undead monster here for revenge on you lot. Shouldn't you, I don't know, do something about that, if that's what you believe?"

"It seems you're the only hope the people here have. Besides…" He gestures at Trevor's still-dripping arm. "It doesn't seem there's anything I could do to harm you."

It's...probably not a good idea to argue Trevor's still perfectly killable by the usual methods of killing anybody, like a knife or an arrow. And it may not be true in any meaningful way at this point. He doesn't actually know if he can bleed out or anything. It might just hurt a bunch, isn't that kind of shit how Hell works? It's better if people think there's no point in trying and leave him be.

Still. "Sypha, you know better, can't you back me up?"

"Would you prefer I said you were speaking of the future? You seem very touchy about talk of prophecy."

"I'd prefer it over people thinking I'm a rotting monster!"

"Well, you've already managed to touch water," she observes. "If you can get soap involved, perhaps there'll be some chance."

He'd missed her so much. Instead of any comeback he just smiles at her like an idiot. She turns away sharply, her face disappearing into the collar of her robes.

Fine, fine, smiling is terrible. Message received, God, he'll keep to stoicism for the rest of eternity. He walks carefully around her to look over the rabble with pitchforks outside again.

"This worked out," he reminds himself. "It worked out for Wallachia."

That's as much as he could ask for.

It working out for him too, that'd just have been a luxury.


	5. Alucard

It all goes well. Terrifyingly so.

This is a perfect moment for everything to twist and go wrong. But the Night Horde comes in the same numbers it came before and not an endless wave. They aren't invulnerable: they burn where they're splashed by water, they recoil when they try to claw the ice, they're stabbed by pikes and sliced by swords and burst at the strike of his whip. And this time, the screams elsewhere in the city are occasional, rather than a rolling din of suffering.

The big chatty one explodes, like before, with particular force.

"The ground's going to give way now," he tells Sypha. "You know, in retrospect -"

The ground gives way.

He yanks them together with his whip, Sypha slows both their falls with a burst of air, and they hit the ground alive though more roughly than he expects. Oh, he forgot she wasn't very good at that to start.

"This was your plan?" Sypha demands. "And you called mine stupid?"

"You're complete and utterly right," he tells her. "Now we've got to run through the next section so we aren't crushed by wall machines."

"_Why?_"

"Ask Sleepyhead, I didn't build the fucking things!"

"You insisted on going down this way!"

"It's not my fault, Gresit makes people stupid!" She hadn't been yelling at him back then. Back then it'd been an accident. "I should've explained," he apologizes. "I didn't mean to make you. I just... I was only thinking how it was fast going this way."

She nods grudgingly. "We are in a hurry."

"That too." He steels himself and adds, "We, um, do fall down a bunch more. At the end of the wall machines, the platform crumbles and we have to jump to these giant gears."

"Why are there giant gears?"

"I have no idea. And nothing happens when those come apart either, I don't know, it's magic."

"The gears, which we have to jump onto, are also going to crumble."

"He did a really shitty job of building this place, I told you earlier. But after we get onto the scaffolding next to it, then when _that_ crumbles, we'll fall through another hole and that'll finally bring us to Alucard." Everything had been the same with Sypha, there was no reason to think Alucard's coffin wouldn't open this time. And Sypha was here, she wouldn't take no for an answer. She'd crack the stone in half if he wouldn't come out.

"...what was the cyclops pathway like?"

"I don't know. I didn't check, I was fine with getting back onto solid ground and never going into this architectural clusterfuck again."

"Well," Sypha says, with only a bit of irritated tightness. "Finding the sleeping warrior is what's important. Lead on."

She looks considerably more grumpy after they've fallen through the final hole but by then they're done. She'll forgive Trevor once Alucard pops up and she gets her messiah.

"Come on!" he says, jumping to his feet. Sypha is still lying on the rubble, so he grabs her hand and pulls her upright. "We're here, see? Right over there!"

He runs forward, stomps on the floor panel, Alucard's spooky fucking coffin with its spooky half-filled cannisters of blood hisses, and the lid actually slides off just like it did.

Alucard floats out.

It's a little weird, actually. He remembers this, but it's colored by remembering the rest of it. In a few minutes Alucard will put on a shirt then burrow into his ridiculous black jacket and gloves, clinging to them like a turtle to its shell for the rest of the trip but he's going to insist on fighting half naked right now. He's also going to hiss and snarl and otherwise act completely -

The piece of shit had baited him.

Trevor's smile turns to a scowl. Like a Belmont wouldn't have been willing to fight presumably-Dracula on the basis of being Dracula alone and needed Alucard's extra theatrics as motivation. Fuck, Trevor'd even said as much right then.

Alucard's head tips forward so his stupidly long hair hides his face. "Why are you here?" Heh, Trevor does know that one. For someone who treats facial expressions as optional half the time, he sure has some bad tells.

"The story. The messiah sleeps under Gresit!" Sypha says. "The man who will save us from Dracula."

"And you? Are you in search of a mythical savior?"

"Sort of, but in a more roundabout way, because prophecies aren't real."

"No?"

"Enough," Sypha says. "You knew exactly where to find him. You couldn't have known that without prophecy."

"Could've. If I fell down a hole and ended up right here. Which I did."

"I'm sorry about Belmont," Sypha tells Alucard. "He is having some difficulties reconciling things with his religious beliefs."

"Belmont," Alucard repeats. "House of Belmont?"

Trevor doesn't move. "I know what you're thinking and I really don't want a fight."

"Really," Alucard hisses, keeping his mouth nearly shut, as if he thinks a Belmont might be too stupid to have figured out someone who sleeps in a fancy red-lined stone coffin flanked by blood tanks is a vampire. He hasn't even stopped floating over that coffin yet.

"Really."

"Dracula is abroad in the land. He has an army of monsters. He's determined to wipe out all human life wherever he finds it," Sypha cuts in. He'd forgotten those brief minutes she'd spent thinking highly enough of either of them to think they'd listen. She sure didn't make that mistake again.

"A Belmont?" Alucard repeats, illustrating Trevor's point. "Who doesn't want a fight?"

Ugh. "Trevor Belmont, last son of the house of Belmont, yes, the Belmonts who kill vampires like you, yes, I can tell, you wouldn't know subtle if it bit you in your floating ass."

Sypha makes a little gasp and right she didn't know that yet. Or was really in denial because how many good things come out of coffins? Probably assumed it was all fine because fucking prophecy said. Well, she shouldn't be mad he didn't bother bringing it up, it's not like finding out made her take anything Trevor said about him being an untrustworthy bloodsucker who was probably going to murder them seriously.

And she was right about it. That was the problem, she was right about almost everything.

"I know, if I'm really a Belmont I must want to kill you and I've got to be a fake then. No, it's because you're a sore fucking loser who's going to throw a hissyfit every single time I land a hit, can we just leave now to kill Dracula without a stupid cock-measuring contest. Go put on your clothes."

"I don't believe you," the floating asshole says, because of course he doesn't, or fuck, maybe he does and he's just incredibly cranky when he wakes up. It's entirely possible; Trevor never saw Alucard sleep while he was still with them. Alucard's basically a toddler as vampires go, isn't he? His mom was still alive until that self-righteous crazy fucker crossed her path, so Alucard can't be older than, what, fifty, sixty?

And there's the magic sword flying out of the coffin to join in on the floating. "I think you're just some runt running around with the family crest," Alucard tells him.

"Fuck you!" Trevor explodes. "You don't get to call me a fake! You faked Sypha's prophecy! She believed the entire thing you selfish short-sighted prick!"

"Belmont, you don't understand -"

"I do! That's the entire problem here!"

"I don't like your tone," Alucard tells him, pointing the sword.

"You saw me," he says to Sypha. "I tried. I'm not the asshole here. I'm a nice person and it's everyone else who're a pack of bastards." And he snaps his whip.

In the instant before it hits sudden panic washes over Trevor. What if, this time, Alucard simply bursts into flame when the tip hits?

Alucard doesn't. Alucard's knocked backward from the blow, just like he was. Blood flows from the shallow wound that the whip made and he crouches and hisses like some sort of albino cat-snake over it, just like he did.

Like Alucard wasn't the one who demanded Trevor attack him. "Stone the fuck up."

Trevor fights defensively, doesn't go for the second hit when Alucard hops up and settles for, "You're leaving yourself wide open."

"Can you do anything but talk," Alucard replies coolly, like he isn't still clearly bleeding from where the skin on his stomach's broken open.

And the problem with getting this over with at some point is Alucard's fighting defensively too.

Well, okay.

More accurate to say Alucard's pulling his punches.

The more Trevor hits him, the less true that'll be. It'd ended with actually getting punched across the room and unlike some inconsiderate people, Trevor can't just magic his bruises away a few minutes later.

The next time Alucard dodges into the air, Trevor does hit his side and sends him tumbling left into the ground again.

Oh yeah, Alucard's angry now. Trevor can tell because he's not taking time for more hissing drama. Now Alucard'll try to catch the whip on his sword, leaving Trevor with just the shortsword.

Trevor chucks the whip onto the ground between them. "I hit you twice, you haven't hit me yet. Satisfied? Are we done now?"

He knows Alucard won't actually -

"Shit!" He pulls out the blade by reflex as Alucard and Alucard's magic sword shoot toward him. He blocks the blow and twists backward to avoid the next slash.

Still, he knows. He's seen what happens after this, he's seen Alucard go from gloating fangs at his throat to bland civility in moments. Before Alucard can close the gap he drops his shortsword as well, raises both his hands so he can't possibly reach his knives. "I'm done. You won't kill me."

"You think I can't?"

"You won't."

Fuck, getting punched across the room hurts exactly as much as it did. More, maybe. Of fucking course Alucard would be a sore winner too.

"Stop!" Sypha shouts.

Right. That's what he's missing.

"He's baiting you too," Trevor says. "Your magic."

Her hand glows and sweeps upward, pulling a wall of ice into existence and forcing Alucard back a step as it separates them. "Enough!"

From behind it, still on the floor, Trevor points at her and them himself. "Speaker-magician. Vampire hunter. Exactly the people you need, and also, the only ones you've got so fucking deal with it. Beggers can't be choosers, Alucard - "

Alucard is through the ice and one hand slams Trevor's head into the stone. "And why would you think to call me that?" he growls.

Well, fuck.

"He knows the future!" Sypha interjects. "He knew my name as well, and precisely how we could get here."

Alucard's grip on Trevor's skull only tightens. He turns toward her. "That isn't how it works." And then worse, "A Speaker should know better," with his voice thickening with suspicion.

Trevor panics and knees him between the legs. It is precisely as ineffective as he already knew it was and this time Alucard doesn't even dignify his struggles with a retort, continuing to stare at Sypha instead.

"I do not understand it myself," Sypha says, her voice now very calm. It is frighteningly like how her grandfather spoke to the priests. "But it is the truth. Shortly after arriving here, he sought out my grandparent and saved him from the Church's men. He said he was here to retrieve me from where I had been trapped in the catacombs and that he was the Hunter of the prophecy. No one but my own people knew I was there, and they feared I was dead. And he knew I was a magician. He predicted the events of tonight, mentioning you by name as well, though it did not mean anything to me then."

"Perhaps what you recount is true." Alucard slowly turns back to Trevor. "Well?"

"Well what?" he manages.

"Convince me."

"You're here because you heard about the story and wanted to take advantage of people searching for some sleepy messiah," Trevor says, which may not be the best to lead with but it's what's burning in his mind. "You need our help because you already tried - thanks I guess - and lost and crawled into your coffin down here to heal." Alucard is making no effort to actually restrain Trevor, because he's that arrogant and overconfident, so Trevor punctuates that by poking the livid scar across his chest. Alucard's skin is surprisingly cold, but right, vampire. "You've really only been under here a year. And you're not going to kill a human."

"Is that what my father told you," Alucard spits, and his other hand goes around Trevor's neck and squeezes tight.

Before things go completely black he stabs Alucard right in the lung with a dagger, exactly opposite where the heart would be. That gets Alucard off him long enough to gasp out, "Wait - no - uh - when you introduced - you said your name was Andy Tepes!" as he's grabbed again.

Alucard stops. He looks faintly offended.

"Fuck, that's not it, is it." Fine. Getting to die first is kinder than he'd expect of Hell.

"Andy," Alucard repeats. "_Andy_."

"I will not let you kill him," Sypha announces, fire in her hands.

"No, don't - just let him!" Trevor screams. "Don't, I don't want -"

Alucard lets go.

He stares at Sypha, who stares back just as unblinking. "I do not wish to fight you," he says very slowly.

"Then you won't kill him."

"No..." he says. "No, I don't think... It does not seem like sending something so...confused is what my father would do." He touches the top of a smear of blood that's all that's left to mark where Trevor's dagger sank into his chest and finally climbs off Trevor.

"And who is your father?"

Alucard stares down at Trevor. "Well?"

"Don't you want to do your own introduction?" Alucard doesn't react. Trevor sighs. Alucard better not complain it wasn't said pretty enough. "Dracula. Dracula, Alucard, get it? Vampires are pretentious freaks and he's the worst one about it."

"It is not anything I picked," Alucard claims, like a liar.

"He was waiting for us to help him kill his dad."

"Why?" Sypha asks.

Alucard's voice is a hurt whisper, just like it had been: "Because it is what my mother would have wanted." But then he looks down at Trevor again and adds more coldly, "But you already knew that about me, didn't you."

"If I was working for Dracula I'd've staked you. I could've and you know it."

"I am _Adrian_ Tepes," Alucard informs him archly as he heads back toward the coffin and, if Trevor recalls correctly, the rest of his clothes, "so named by both my parents."

"I'm not an idiot. You were strangling me. It was the only thing that came to mind."

"I suppose I can believe the last part." Dressed properly - by vampire standards anyway - Alucard is now also moving and talking like Trevor better remembers. Still completely fucking weird, but familiar weird and not whatever sort of weird he was doing with his floaty fangy monster show.

"Oh fuck you. Where do you get off, anyway, I'm the one who should be suspicious."

"Yes. You should."

Alright. Yeah. He walked into that one.

"You believe someone told him what he knows," Sypha says. "And perhaps there was a way to know the other things he said about me and what would happen above. But if he tells you what will happen and that comes true, will that convince you?"

Alucard says, "That isn't how this works."

"Belmont, what do you believe happens next?"

Trevor opens his mouth and realizes. "Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck shit."

He doesn't need to worry about Sypha and Alucard killing each other because Sypha's going to kill him right now.

"There are traps on the way out?" Trevor pleads desperately. "There won't be any when we leave but it's because you did something, right? Those wall panels. But there would've been traps if we came down that way first?"

"Which way are we talking about now?" Sypha asks suspiciously. Oh no. She knows.

"I meant to return by the same way you entered," Alucard says. His magic sword floats over and slides into its probably superfluous scabbard.

Trevor buries his head in his hands. "There's a way connected to this statue up top. It's how Alucard led us out. It's not like there wouldn't have been traps apparently. And I don't actually know how to get the statue open from the top because we only came out of it, and it was a labyrinth to get there. And it took all night to climb back up, there were so many stairs, what is with vampires and fucking stairs."

Sypha shakes her head. "You did get us down here rapidly."

"How did you get here, then?"

"We fell, repeatedly," Sypha says. She points to the hole in the corridor ceiling. "We finally ended up landing there." She pauses. "He predicted every part. I doubt Dracula would have expected all of it to crumble as we reached it."

"My apologies for your difficulty. It was not intended to be traveled. The structures above were designed to hold their own weight and no more."

Trevor sits up in outrage. "You made it shit on purpose?! I thought you just fucked up!"

"It requires skill to build to the exact tolerances of the materials involved," Alucard informs him frostily. "And anyone who knew it was there would also be well aware attempting to traverse it would destroy it in the process. There is nothing impressive about such a prediction."

"I think you just fucked it up and won't admit it," Trevor says. He climbs to his feet and starts collecting his weapons since he can't just snap his fingers and have them trot back to him. "You should stick to carpentry, you're better at that."

Sypha murmurs, "So the other entrance is at a statue... Tepes -"

"Alucard," he corrects softly.

"Alucard, what about the entrance guarded by your cyclops?"

"Cyclops?"

"Below the mausoleum, not far from the church. I was turned to stone until Belmont came down and killed it."

Alucard goes perfectly, breathlessly still. Then he says, "We need to leave immediately."

Huh. Shame Trevor never thought to bring that up. He should've realized someone so defensive when they complained about how hard it was getting down here wouldn't have a monster that trapped people so it could eat their fear as his welcoming committee. But then, at the time Trevor had still been half sure Alucard was going to eat them personally.

"Why? What did killing it do?" Sypha asks.

Alucard is striding forward. In a clipped voice, he says, "My defenses are mechanical, not monstrous."

"Leaving immediately sounds great," Trevor agrees. Two for leaving and one for staying means they actually get out of this crumbling shitstain of a city early. "The barricades are a problem but you can probably throw a wagon over the walls. Can you carry a horse over, do you think? And us, I guess, getting in by shit pipe was bad enough, I don't want to have to leave that way too."

"Is that what..." Sypha mutters to herself.

As Trevor remembers, Alucard goes to the right and starts pressing sections of wall that look exactly like other sections of the wall except for how they dip in for an instant. He's doing it a lot faster, through. What if he misses one?

Five...six...

Yeah, that looks right. And there's the first fucking staircase. Stairs, corridors, stairs stairs corridors. They'll even have to go down stairs at various points, for reasons Alucard never bothered to explain. Probably he got lost and just didn't want to admit it.

"What about the cyclops?" Sypha insists. "If you didn't put it there, who did?"

Alucard ducks his head and says through his hair, "I don't know."

"You think Dracula did it," Trevor guesses.

"Oh! To prevent us from reaching you."

"Perhaps," Alucard allows. "I would have thought he'd be more direct." His hand presses against his collar where the scar begins. "But I suppose I am not the best judge of what he would do."

They continue in silence for a bit. Alucard is alternating between an uncomfortably fast pace and overcorrecting to an insultingly slow one. He must be really shaken.

Trevor offers, "The sleeping soldier's an old story. Dracula could've left something there a long time ago."

"Perhaps," Alucard says again, this time more clearly meaning, "No."

Well, he tried.

"I don't imagine all that was what you intended to happen," Sypha says very quietly as they continue to trail behind Alucard.

Trevor shrugs. "It went roughly as terrible," he admits. "I was sure the cyclops and prophecy were all some sadistic vampire joke of his. And -" Trevor waves his hand. "You saw, he wanted a fight. So we fought, he punched me and said he'd bite my throat out, I said I'd stake him as he did, then you said you'd burn his head off if he went through with it, and he was satisfied we'd be useful. Well, satisfied you'd be useful at least."

"He does bite people, then?" Sypha says, surprised.

"No, no," Trevor says. "Or. Hm." He might've just said that to shut Trevor up. Trevor hadn't bothered asking for details because he hadn't believed any of it at the time. It doesn't really matter, though. "He won't, anyway." Alucard would, perhaps, sooner die. Not that Trevor forgives it if that's why. "All that - what just happened, that's not him. You'll see. You like him better than me actually. He's got _manners_."

"Does he now. I'll look forward to seeing that someday."

He really thought he'd like Sypha taking his side of things more. He doesn't get to enjoy anything, does he. "Alucard, you'd really like it if you could kill me, right?"

Alucard speeds up again.

"Belmont, stop it," Sypha says.

"I mean in general! We're on the same side here," Trevor calls, breaking into a jog. "You don't want to fight Sypha, I don't want you and Sypha to fight. Just admit the prophecy is fake so she doesn't think she has to."

Alucard doesn't turn. "Do you think telling me that will be enough to change my mind?"

It takes Trevor a second. "I'm not trying to talk anyone out of anything! Sypha's here because she cares about saving the people of Wallachia. You don't have to lie for us to help you."

Sypha tells Trevor, "Whatever you think you're doing, don't. I'm not going to stand aside and let him kill you."

"Sypha," Alucard says, stopping. "Where do Speakers think prophecy comes from?"

"Ah. We believe them to be information from the future. Is that what -"

"They're made up bullshit!" Trevor explodes. He points at Alucard accusingly, the gesture hampered by the fact Alucard is still refusing to turn around. "He admitted he's here because he knew about the story. A regular story, not some message from the future. Some people made up some story about a messiah. Because there's a made-up story, desperate people go down to look for it. And he was desperate too so he went down first to wait for them. You don't need a miracle for any of it."

"A convenient argument," Alucard tells him.

"There's nothing convenient about it! This isn't about what I wanted to be true!"

Sypha sighs. "Why don't we agree that none of us are killing each other instead of arguing."

"He's not even a soldier," Trevor whines. "You're smart, Sypha, come on."

"The original prophecy said only he would be a warrior," Sypha explains. "It likely shifted to the phrase 'sleeping soldier' because the words sound better. I did tell you people mangle prophecies all the time. That's one of the ways."

"Okay so...but then it's possible you got it wrong too."

She glares at Trevor.

"Not you specifically," he backpeddles. "Just somebody. Maybe not even a Speaker, it could be the person who told the first Speaker who screwed it up!"

"Belmont, you said that you were going along with the prophecy because you didn't want to argue over nothing. Can't you keep doing that?"

"But he - it's not like he even believes it."

"You've very insistent about that," Alucard says, turning away again.

Oh.

"We were all idiots," Trevor mutters. "Just...that's unfair. God. If no one else knew any better, how could you expect me to?"


	6. Surfacing

This time, when they step out from behind the statue, Alucard doesn't immediately put it back. Instead, he points without quite touching to the tiny detail of a ring on the left hand. "Pressing that opens the passageway," he tells them, like anyone, ever, was going to work that out.

"Oh!" Sypha says. Alucard steps back as she reaches to depress the even tinier carved stone of the ring. The statue swings back into place. "How clever. Is it magic, or like the smokeless lights?"

"Neither, it's balanced such that -"

"Who cares, none of us ever came back here," Trevor interrupts.

"You're exceptionally bad at the pretense of future knowledge," Alucard claims.

"Just because it was your _plan_ to crawl back down there doesn't mean it happened. Even that turned out to be too much effort for you."

"It's nearly dawn," Sypha interjects. "We should get moving before the sun rises."

"I'm unharmed by sunlight," Alucard tells her. Trevor didn't believe him then and he's seen nothing to change his mind. Halfbreeds might not outright burn but they're still said to keep indoors or to nighttime, and Alucard's behavior matched up well enough.

"Oh. Good. In that case, I'd like to go to my family first. They've been hiding down in the catacombs with that cyclops all night." She adds, "Belmont suggested it."

Alucard nods. "I should see it myself. That entrance was sealed off decades ago."

Walking through Gresit's not as bad as it really had been since there's a lot fewer bodies scattered about. There's still all the corpses from the attacks in prior day, though. Alucard pauses on the bridge and looks over the side where the bodies are piled up in the river.

The sooner they get out of here the better.

Trevor is about to bring up leaving, and a wagon, and convincing Alucard to hop everything over the walls for them, when a horrible thought occurs to him. He grabs Sypha's shoulder and gestures at her to keep walking. "Sypha," he hisses. "You remember the...person, I said was going to be killed by demons."

"You mean the -"

"Shh! " He gestures frantically to Alucard, still contemplating the bodies, or the river, or fuck knows. "I just realized. What if gloating actually did something, what if he actually listened to me, and now he's still running around up here. What if that's what I fucked up. Because it's wrong to gloat." That made sense, right? Doing something God didn't like would make things worse. "Because those other ones were supposed to die in the mob only there wasn't a mob, so what if he's still around too."

"I would not think ill of anything a person might do, under such circumstances."

"No, the problem is -" He gestures at Alucard again. "Never said anything about getting - " Trevor stops and tries to reroute the sentence, because 'revenge' is pretty unambiguous. Justice? Basically the same thing. "I really don't understand what… I mean, wouldn't killing the guy be the first thing to do? But he was still here. Because they didn't know about him? Or was that on purpose, or something? I don't know if it'd be reopening old wounds or something."

"It wouldn't be right to hide it, though… Or worse, if that man shows up without warning -"

It's funny...he'd intended to drag the guy to Alucard back then. Prove a point to them all about what a vampire was, find out just how much self-control the monster he was stuck working with had. Now he desperately doesn't want to find out. "What if, you two stay here, and I go check. Make sure it's not a problem." Certainly everyone made it clear they expected it from him and weren't about to get in his way.

"But, maybe he'd rather deal with it himself..."

"I can hear you perfectly well," Alucard says.

Trevor snaps, "I know and it's making this very difficult."

"Alucard," Sypha says, turning and heading back. "We know some things of your mother's murder. If, if someone from Targoviste escaped…"

"I attempted such a compromise. It was rejected. So I will obey my mother's will in the matter." He turns away from the railing and resumes walking.

"Even if it's someone who was involved? Very directly?" Sypha persists.

"I will obey my mother's will in the matter," Alucard repeats.

Trevor doubts that was really the will of someone getting burned at the stake but if Alucard wants to believe his mom meant to kill no one ever and not, as Trevor would guess, only for her hellspawn of a husband to stop somewhere short of massacring everyone in the country, then he can.

It's - fine, admirable he guesses. To obey a last request, no matter what your own feelings are. Trevor hadn't managed, when it came down to it.

"Alright," Trevor says uncomfortably. "So… I'll just go off by myself, then."

"No," Alucard says, voice still flat.

"It's not revenge if I never met her."

"I don't trust you to be alone." He glances at Sypha. "Insist on his presence if you must. But you do not know what he might do unobserved. You know there is something wrong here."

"Fine, whatever," Trevor says.

"Like that," Alucard continues. "That is not something a Belmont should agree to. He should be concerned I'm trying to rid myself of the two of you for my own purposes."

"Oh for - he thinks he's already met you!" Sypha shouts. "He thought he'd already met me! You've heard him talking. I know it isn't how prophecy is said to work, I don't understand it either, but he's been nothing but helpful. You assume the worst only because you do not know how he could do what he claims. Fearing what's not understood has caused enough suffering already."

"It is perfectly explicable," Alucard says with strained patience. "Someone spied on you and fed him the information. And they would not have done so with good intentions."

"So you believe someone has been watching this city for weeks at least to spy on me, and learning all about you since years and years ago, all to be convincing. And after such elaborate preparation, this is who they send?" She waves at Trevor. "Someone who can't even keep the future and the past straight when he talks, and instead of defending himself tries to start fights about how all prophecy is a lie? Can you think of a worse choice for this? Is there even a worse choice anyone could find in all of Wallachia?"

Wow, Sypha. What happened to being on his side?

"If they needed to use a Belmont for whatever their purposes are, they would have little choice in the matter. This may well be the amount of madness it takes to make one tractable. Or it could be that they think I'd hesitate to kill something so obviously lamed."

"Hey," Trevor snaps. "I could beat you. You didn't even get in a hit until I'd dropped my whip _and _my sword."

"A thing you did because you so badly did not want to fight a vampire."

"You're barely even a vampire," Trevor says. "I'm here to help kill Dracula. We're allies, there's nothing weird about not wanting to fight. It doesn't mean I can't handle myself. I've killed lots of vampires." Which is also a touchy, touchy subject with Alucard, so he adds, "Evil vampires, who were killing people. I killed a lot of those. I didn't just disarm myself and let them kill me." That wasn't at all how it'd gone, God. "I'm _useful_."

"Very much," Sypha agrees. "And you haven't reported back to your incompetent spymaster about how Alucard's seen through their carefully laid yet horribly executed plans either, which is nice of you. I think everything is going very well for us all."

So then, what's going to go wrong?

Things aren't exactly worse with Alucard, really, and Sypha's levelheaded, she's not going to start anything if Alucard doesn't. Even Alucard mostly won't start stuff as long as Trevor keeps his mouth shut. And this time they're going to be leaving soon and Trevor won't have to sit through all the fallout again.

He just has to not go off on his own so Alucard doesn't decide he's chatting with Dracula and needs to be killed so Alucard and Sypha don't kill each other. And that's easy. They'll all get on the wagon and Alucard will spend the trip staring daggers while Trevor doesn't send pigeon messages off to whoever in the castle handles those. Do vampires use pigeons? Maybe owls, owls are spooky. And bloodthirsty.

Trevor considers asking and realizes Alucard would just assume he such an idiot he couldn't even remember what he'd been told to use. But owls are the worst bird, so probably, unless they use bats. Bats can't really fly that far, though...maybe magic bats…? Bats would be better at getting in and out of vampire lairs too. Owls fly into trees and they live in those, he wouldn't trust them to get through windows regularly. But owls eat bats...

The church comes into view.

The doors are cracked just half off their hinges, almost artfully dangling. A spray of blood covers the threshold.

Well… So the bishop's probably dead. But the Night Horde isn't exactly a picture of discipline, unless they're following strict orders to be as sloppy as possible. Point is they leave people alive in the middle of a bloodbath all the time and they could easily think it was funny to kill everyone inside except the worst one.

"Wait a moment, I want to get a closer look at that," he says, pointing.

"Must we?" Sypha asks.

"There doesn't have to be a we." Sypha gestures back to Alucard who, yes, still very pointedly watching him, and Trevor sighs. "Right. Look, I need to see the inside. He was the only one at the church, as far as I could work out. And he must've been killed there. But…" Trevor shrugs, waves his hand at the visible gore. "Looks like there were more people. The other priests, maybe, because everybody else was listening to me?" They weren't out inciting their pogram, and he doubts they decided to actually reconsider the moral rightness of mass murder. So, if they still believed the problem was the Speakers, but with the crowd against them couldn't act on that… Well, it'd make sense for them to sit in the Church, thinking they'd be spared and waiting for everyone else to die so they could tell the corpses they'd told them so.

And they'd done so just when after days of leaving the place alone, the demons had crawled right in.

It's a shame there's no one around to ask how that worked. To Trevor's admittedly limited knowledge, consecration was a pretty sticky sort of magic, remaining even in old ruins.

He didn't learn more because it's not useful, really. Given a choice monsters would kill people outside first, and if they didn't already know someone was inside they probably wouldn't search one just to be sure, but if that's where their prey went they'd follow. Mostly it just made them angrier from having to deal with it.

But there should be marks, he knew that much. Discoloration at the least, where they stepped. There should be evidence.

Trevor approaches the doorway and realizes Alucard's right behind him.

"You need to stay outside," Trevor says.

Alucard looks offended, of all things, but doesn't argue.

There's bits of gore across the whole building but nothing as intentionally decorative as the intestine wreathes he'd seen last morning. White bone fragments, half a liver against the wall, a stomach popped open to spill acid across the floor. A tongue. Most outright missing, like they'd been eaten.

"I don't see what good this does," Sypha mutters from the doorway. "I don't think you'll be able to identify anyone. Or even know how many died."

There's one distinct blood splatter at the pulpit, just like there was, with claw gouges through the book and into the wood. Trevor touches the marks again, the ripped pages and broken splinters without even a hint of charring. Like it's all utterly ordinary.

It doesn't matter, really. Trevor doesn't rely on churches for sanctuary or, ideally, anything at all. It was just a bit creepy back then, to see something he'd learned shouldn't work like this.

It does also raise the question of if he actually would've lit on fire or whatever if he'd gone into a functional church back then. Or, had inviting him in been what unchurched this place? That'd be hilarious irony. He hadn't really gotten into any of the details on how excommunication worked. It'd been pretty much fuck off and stay fucked off, and he'd returned the sentiment.

"He's dead," Trevor says, heading back out. Well, really, the guy's been dead for a while, but not having to deal with him further in Trevor's own death is nice. "Hopefully so are all the rest. I hate dealing with priests."

"Some of them can be kind, sometimes."

"Can be," Trevor repeats. "Yeah. When they feel like it." Once in a blue moon, someone decides to take a break in being a piece of shit. Like he's supposed to be impressed, God? He thinks he prefers the honest and unrelenting awfulness of the bishop over people who think a few scraps are enough to balance the ledger.

He finds Alucard waiting outside, leaning against the wall in a way that strikes Trevor as petty. It's certainly not because walking up and down a million stairs tired him out. Why do vampires like stairs so damn much.

Trevor wonders if Alucard could already tell this place is apparently just a well-decorated building or if he only found out when he felt the lack of it in the wall itself. If anyone would know what went wrong with this place, it'd be a creature of the night. Then again, this isn't the actual Alucard. Can he even say things Trevor doesn't already know?

He hesitates. But he might as well find out now. "How'd you get your sword?" he asks.

Alucard doesn't respond.

It's - he already knows neither of them are real. But -

He turns to Sypha desperately. "Your grandfather, what's his name?"

She hesitates, then says, "Zuki."

Trevor laughs in relief. "Didn't tell me that."

It could be nonsense, like he's interrogating his own nightmare and making it up as he goes. Or God throwing shit in. Or the Devil, he guesses? He's not entirely clear exactly how that's delegated.

But he doesn't fucking care.

"Why do Speakers have weird names like that?" he asks. "Do you pass them down from somewhere or what?"

"It's more complicated than that," Sypha begins. "You see…"


	7. Speakers

"...but these days often the parents give them a written name early on, from the first town the child enters after their birth. So when they're asked, 'What is your name?' they can say, 'My parent called me...' and then if that person later asks, 'Do you know this person?' or 'Where can they be found?' the rest of us say, 'I know no one who calls themself that.'"

"To my understanding, humans do not consider themselves bound by technical truths. Or truths of any kind, when it's inconvenient."

"Oh, people can be very angry if they realize, but often they do not. And it is also...since we don't know someone's written name, we cannot give any other answer, no matter what's threatened or offered. And that is a good habit to be in for when they're asking using a real name." She considers, and adds, "I think sometimes, because townspeople can't keep us straight, they think we can't either. We're all just blue robes to them."

"It seems it would be easier to not stand out so much in the first place." Alucard is tugging idly at his gloves.

"People may be hostile to visible differences, but they very much do not like surprises. Being noticed is like...diluting the hostility. Watering it down so any sip is not so deadly a poison. If we were not viewed as apart..." Sypha shakes her head. "Maybe they wouldn't have said they'd kill us _if _we didn't leave. Maybe they would have simply arrived in the night. That's what they do to their fellows."

She looks at Trevor, as if she expects him to have anything to add. He shrugs. "People stop caring about imaginary problems once real ones stare them in the face. The one good thing that came out of all this."

It occurs to him that liking how the upside of demons massacring everyone is at least the Church got fucked over too is maybe part of why he's in this situation in the first place. Sin's bad but he's pretty sure not caring it's bad is worse. That's what you really get in trouble for.

Even what he regrets...it's not really the part he did wrong, it's all the stuff that made it happen in the first place. That's certainly not repentance.

If this is, maybe, only Purgatory, then...he's not sure how any of this is supposed to work. Purgatory burns the sin off or something. He doesn't see how making him miserable is going to change his mind if it's his mind that's the problem. He's said a lot of shit to get people to leave him alone and he can't think of a single time getting his testicles kicked in made him more sincere about it.

Not knowing how this works is probably another mark against him, but exactly whose fault is that, God?

"What exactly do you expect to come of this?" Alucard asks.

Trevor snaps, "I didn't do it because I expected anything. It's what I do. God, I would've done it however it ended, I would've still done it even if everyone kept believing all that shit. Can't I get to be happy they don't?"

"How enlightening."

"_Fuck do you care._" Alucard doesn't. He'd made that terribly clear. And indeed, Alucard doesn't argue the point. Instead, he begins to slow, enough to lag behind the group.

Maybe it's more baiting. See if Trevor complains about having his back to a vampire. Trevor had done that himself a bunch in the first few days and been rewarded with nothing but condescending disregard from Alucard. Well, Alucard can go fuck himself, now Trevor gets to not care about things.

And then there's the Speakers. Two of them seem to be still examining the dead cyclop while the rest sit or lie on the ground. Sypha runs forward and begins telling them about what happened above. Alucard trails in almost grudgingly behind Trevor then slides a few steps to the side so he's out of the doorway.

"Didn't you want to examine that thing?" Trevor asks.

"I can see well enough."

"You came all the way down here just to glance at it?"

"No, I -" And then Sypha's encouraging the Speakers over and it's time for vampire dramatics.

It plays out almost word for word how it did for real: he's Alucard, why of course he's their lazy-ass messiah, look at me I talk fancy, I'm the exact opposite of a ravening monster, it's so great how nobody knows vampires are all like this when they feel like playing with their food and to not fall for pretty words and a momentary pretense of consideration.

Not that Alucard's doing that, exactly. Just that it shouldn't work. People should know better, like they should know about salt, about suspicious statues, about long black plants growing underwater and five-toed wolves and seven-toed cats and red-blossomed grass and ice under fingernails and how if it were a normal _four_-legged horse the tracks would show a doubled cressent where it'd stepped twice in the same spot. But people don't know anything about monsters, even Speakers, so Alucard can charm them into thinking he's the nice exception by acting exactly like any other vampire would.

The only difference in the whole thing is being underground next to a monster corpse sent by Dracula instead of up top. Trevor hadn't wanted a vampire wandering around the city and had demanded they wait at the Speaker's house. But it seemed nothing would change Alucard's little speeches, not what had happened differently or even the part now where now Trevor keeps his mouth shut instead of interrupting two words in with, "He's a vampire!" Maybe Alucard had written out his lines before taking a nap. Maybe that was a thing all vampires liked to do.

It concludes with the Speakers deciding they should hurry back to the surface to help the survivors. Alucard then for no reason walks in the opposite direction.

"What the hell," Trevor complains. "Did you forget something in your coffin? Get it later."

"This area does not connect to my keep," Alucard tells him, sidestepping. "I will check something and then return."

"We can't just split up! You're going to get killed."

That gets Alucard to pause, though it seems less because of Trevor's valid point and more because he thinks Trevor's threatening him. "By what?"

"I don't know! Whatever else is there!" He looks to Sypha, about to tell her to stay, Alucard wants to explore the catacombs for no reason, but then he freezes. If he does that then it'll turn out all the townsfolk have changed their minds about mass murder. And he'll see that. And she'll see that, and he'll see her seeing that, and -

"You didn't know about the cyclops," Trevor tries to reason. "Something else will be there you don't expect. It's a bad idea."

Alucard gestures to the obvious remains of the cyclops' victims. "I doubt anything will take me by surprise." His expression is momentarily one of disdain and then it just falls off like a dropped mask and he heads toward God-knows-what.

Trevor can't be in both places.

Something horrible is about to happen.

Something horrible is going to happen and he won't be able to do anything about it.

But he has to leave through the exit above sooner or later, but he doesn't have to go back down and see whatever happens there.

"Fine, fuck you," he hisses. "When you don't come back I'm not going to look for you so I hope you die fast."

Alucard ignores this in favor of disappearing around the corner.

He runs to catch up with the Speakers. "Where's Alucard?" Sypha asks immediately.

Trevor tells her Alucard wanted to look at something. It's technically not a lie, somewhat because it's true but mostly because there's no one to lie to. This isn't a morality play - or no, maybe it's precisely one of those. A bunch of empty gestures toward fake people. Alucard isn't actually there, Sypha isn't actually there, none of them are. It doesn't matter what he actually does.

Maybe he shouldn't have entered Gresit. Maybe he should've just laid down and closed his eyes and refused to see any more of it.

Maybe that's God's point, or maybe God doesn't have a point, maybe Hell is just Hell.

"Belmont!"

Oh, she must've said something. "Sorry, what?"

"I don't know how long Alucard will take, and he won't know where we're staying."

"Oh, actually your house - no, I didn't," Trevor corrects. "Yeah. It's still there and not collapsed."

"Why were you going to destroy my house?"

Trevor shrugs. "Full of priests."

"Ah." She nods. "I am glad we avoided that, then. So, you and they can return to our not collapsed and priest-ridden house for our supplies and I'll wait for Alucard."

"No! I'm not - I'll stay here. You go, I'll wait."

"That...does not seem like the best choice."

"I'm not going anywhere. You guys can go around wasting time trying to help dead people by yourself."

"And why are they dead people?" cuts in Alucard's voice.

He spins. "You're back! You actually came back!" Sypha looks at Trevor suspiciously yet again.

"Yes, it was less fatal than you prophesized."

"I wasn't - that wasn't -" Trevor sighs. "I'm glad, jackass. I assumed more monsters."

"There are, yes," Alucard says. "Why are they dead people, Belmont? What exactly is your plan here?"

He groans in frustration, pressing his hands to his face. "It's not my plan it's just a fact. What about this shit makes you think I wanted any of it? I just want to leave."

Sypha asks, "Are we going to be attacked?"

"No, you're going to be wrong about boiling the disease out of water and he's going to say you're right and it's a huge fucking waste of time."

"Boiling..." Sypha repeats. "I am not wrong! It's common sense to boil water!"

"It really is," Alucard says.

Sypha nods smugly. "Exactly. The spirits of disease are driven out by heat, it's the same as why sick people have fevers."

Alucard stares at her. "What?"

"This was the stupidest possible argument," Trevor tells them. Not that it hadn't been funny at the time. "Invisible animals, invisible spirits, who cares, it's the same damn thing and you're both wrong. Neither is real, boiling water isn't magic, nothing matters, all of them die and I want to leave this shithole already." He should've taken the hint about trusting either of them to know what they were doing. He's such an idiot.

"You said we left this morning," Sypha says. "So how do you know what happens to the people here?"

He'd said...oh, right... "No, I really wanted to leave and this is why."

"I can't leave if people need help."

Right, but this time Alucard - "He said we need to leave!" Trevor says triumphantly, pointing at her messiah.

"I've changed my mind."

"What? No. No, you can't - why would -" Oh fuck. "You're just going to say the opposite of me," he accuses. "We're doing that, aren't we. You petty piece of shit."

"I believe it would be best to remain in Gresit."

"God, seriously?" he asks the ceiling, or, well, the hole where the ceiling was that the Speakers are climbing through. "I'm just not going to do anything. You can't make me because nobody's going to expect me to do shit about sick people."

Sypha nods. "I am fully convinced you shouldn't be around any of them."

"Ha!" he tells God.

"However..." she continues. "If I understand you correctly, you are aware of my future actions to aid these people and any complications that arise. So, at the end of this, will I have learned anything that I could have used now?"

"No."

"Another useful prophecy," Alucard says.

"Fine!" he snaps. "First there was a lot of telling screaming people that you would help them, and then they all died."

Sypha just looks thoughtful. "Of disease?"

"Yeah, bad blood."

"All of them?"

"Yes! I keep saying!"

"All of them die of bad blood," Sypha repeats. "Hm. That's unusual."

"Bad blood," Alucard says with distaste. "And what is that supposed to mean?"

"How can you not know what bad blood is?" Trevor demands, because, seriously now. "Your mother was a doctor!"

"A doctor is not someone who thinks people die of 'bad blood'!" Alucard retorts.

"Well sorry I don't speak a dozen languages! They died of bad blood but whatever that is in Greek, happy now!"

"If you actually knew the future," Alucard says, "then surely you heard the Greek."

"You never said what's Greek for bad blood-"

"Because there's no such thing."

"- because I said it was a horrible idea to let the vampire into the room full of bloody sick people so you never said anything. And sorry I guess, but that's not really my fault because you didn't argue, probably because it meant _you_ got to sit around doing nothing. I didn't know you were just fucking lazy then."

"Belmont, would you say you don't have much medical knowledge?" Sypha asks sweetly.

"Yeah."

"But could you say what this all looked like?"

"They already died," Trevor groans. "Can we just drop it."

"He can't," Alucard says. "He doesn't know."

Smug fucker! "Got hot, then cold. Gasped like fish out of water, which at least meant they couldn't scream that well. Red lines coming out of the wounds and black rotten spots on it, and the wounds turned black too. And all the Speakers said yeah that's bad blood, they're probably going to die. And they got that part right."

"It is quite deadly..." Sypha admits. "But it is not usually... Did the same thing happen with each one?"

"Yeah? That's how disease works, isn't it?"

"An infection spreading throughout the circulatory system is not a specific disease any more than a fever is," Alucard informs them haughtily.

Trevor really only got the second half of that. "Since when is a fever not a disease?"

"Once again, your statements are consistent with information fed to you by another. You are transparently not describing actual events but reciting a symptom list unaware there should be individual variation."

"Fine, fine, whatever. But I'm not going to -" Trevor realizes they're alone. The rest of the Speakers have finished climbing out. "Fuck! We need to get back up there!" Sypha startles and turns to the rope ladder. Before he can do anything another rock rolls down, maybe dislodged by his shout, and he has to sidestep it so it doesn't land on his foot. "And why did you build so fucking much when you're so shitty at stonework?" he continues, starting the climb up the rubble beside her.

"I didn't build this," Alucard says. Alucard, of course, doesn't have to climb the mess, he just starts floating.

"Is that how you can act so smug all the time, you just pretend all your fuckups never happened?"

"This was built several hundred years ago."

"By Dracula himself?" Sypha asks.

"He's just lying again. Dracula's stuff isn't shit like all this, I told you."

"Another prediction?"

"It's where we killed the guy, of course I went there."

Sypha cuts in. "About that. Why did you need to go twice?"

He hadn't, had he. Yeah, he can see that being on God's list of shit he shouldn't've done. "God, I thought, or fine, I just wanted - and it's not like there weren't other reasons. I mean. We were going there anyway." It'd have been wrong not to as well, right? To just give up on everything? "Okay. Maybe I - I didn't care so much about the original reason by then. But there's a difference between thought and action, isn't there? Like you can think about stealing and it's not the same as stealing. And, if you would steal something, but you never get the chance, that's still not as bad as doing it. I didn't get to."

"Do you hope to loot some candlesticks?" Alucard asks, sounding so ridiculously offended and Trevor wants to scream at him.

But Real Alucard isn't listening and screaming at Real Alucard about that fact had been a long and terrible exercise in futility. This is just another fucking riddle. He takes a breath. "Right. I can work it out. The lights are built into the walls, but you're still pissed off just thinking I meant to even though you know there's none to take. What I couldn't do doesn't matter because I wanted to do something I shouldn't've and that's all it takes. But I don't... I don't see how all this is supposed to change my mind."

"The knowledge something isn't there won't change your mind? I suppose that's not a surprise, Belmont."

"It's not all about you and your spooky inheritance, Alucard," Trevor retorts. "If I wasn't sure that candlesticks were possible but I still would get them if I could only find someone who could make me one, then I guess that's wrong of me. Even if I _fucking gave up on it _because I had to do what I was supposed to, that's not enough apparently. I'm sorry I'm not sorry. That's the best I can do, God."

Sypha sighs as loudly as possible. "Maybe this would work better if you forgot about candlesticks and said what it is directly."

"It can't work better. I'm not sorry or not sorry enough or maybe it doesn't fucking matter if I'm sorry I don't know."

"I gather. About what, though?"

"...I think you'd have told me not to," Trevor tells her. "I imagined you might."

"Told you what?"

"God, I don't want to actually hear it," he pleads.

"Told you not to go to the castle?"

He can't help but laugh. It aches and not just because his ribs are bruised. "No. No, of course not. You were the one insisting no delays."

"But then...?"

"It's all over and done with," he groans. "Like all the dead people above. I didn't actually do all that. Not for real. I didn't think they'd listen, I mean how was I supposed to know. The nicest thing I heard from the lot was that they were keeping their mouth shut out of fear instead of slavering at the chance." Had they been, really? Or had people opened their mouths out of fear as well? And does that matter, really, is it really all that much better if they knew what they did was wrong but did it anyway? "I hate this. What's the point in ruminating on it all? It's done."

"Well," Sypha says with that worrying delicacy again, "I can understand wishing for something to be finished with, but the opportunity to right wrongs -"

"Well I wasn't wrong!" Trevor shouts. "If I cared more about saving Speakers, more about good people risking their lives trying to help than the ones trying to kill them, if I prioritized, then so what? I'm not God's fucking hitman!"

"You think you're acting in opposition to God...?" and he is so sick of it being Sypha's voice that keeps suggesting this. Trevor doesn't fucking care if the Speakers really are enemies of God, the world wouldn't have been better if he'd let them die.

"I obviously pissed him off somehow!" He waves one hand wildly for emphasis, swinging him to the side, and as his weight shifts the rock his other hand is holding slides loose.

You'd think Alucard would, like, grab him or something. Instead he gets batted back into the wall. "Ow," he complains. "You're shit at helping." Falling would've probably have hurt less. They're nearly at the top, after all. With any luck he'd land on his head.

"Then use the ladder," Alucard retorts. Trevor doesn't need to use a ladder.

There's no Sypha chiming in with anything about him being an idiot and he looks to find her staring at him with, well, the expression people have when they watch someone almost fall.

So Sypha would be upset. So what! She's not actually here to be upset, she probably doesn't even keep existing if Trevor does get his imaginary skull caved in, so why should Trevor care?

Of course, he didn't fall, so he's still here, so she's still here, so, "Sorry," he says grudgingly and focuses on climbing.


	8. Tea

He and Sypha finally reach the upper section that hasn't - yet, at least - collapsed and pull themselves onto the stairs. Alucard lands effortlessly on the stone next to them, because he cheats.

When they reach the stone chute they slid in through, Alucard says, "This is clearly intended to funnel victims. It would be difficult to retreat, perhaps impossible if injured. It's so obviously a trap. I'm surprised anyone would willingly enter it, even with your preparations."

"Were none, all the rope's from the rest of the Speakers," Trevor promptly and shamelessly tattles. "Sypha just slid right in when she was trying to find you, no plan at all."

"I had a plan -"

"You did not!"

"- and you didn't use any ropes either," Sypha says.

"I didn't _have_ rope. Plus I was going in blind because some people didn't tell me anything because someone else thought that was a good idea _Sypha_."

"But you knew that and you could've asked for rope this time, _Belmont_," Sypha retorts.

"It's not like I needed rope when I knew it was fine. I have a whip, and anyway, I'm great at climbing."

Alucard says, "You proved conclusively you are not."

"That doesn't count," Trevor says, "that was your fault for fucking up all the stonework here." Trevor pointedly climbs out and down the statues without using the rope while Alucard claims yet again none of it's his fault.

There's a grinding sound and he looks up to see Alucard has floated along the side of the wall to fiddle with the wing of one of the gargoyle statues, because he totally didn't build this yet he knows that, yeah right. There's now no sign of the hole they just left through beyond the dangling rope leading to where it was.

Hm. He looks at Sypha. She seems as surprised as him by this turn of events, so she's not the one who opened it up. So someone else really was here, Dracula or at least some servant of his. Turns out Trevor was completely and utterly right about this all being a trap for gullible people.

Alucard continues to ponder the statue for a bit, then deigns to float down.

"How do you fly?" Sypha asks. "I can't feel any air moving."

"This isn't flying. Are you familiar with lodestones, how they can push apart?" At Sypha's immediate nod, he continues, "It is a magical version of that repulsion, between myself and my surroundings. It only works in proximity to something else."

"It's a dhampir ability," Trevor adds.

"It's a vampire ability," Alucard corrects. "Dhampir grasp it far more easily, to my understanding. Like a lodestone, it works through harnessing a duality."

Sypha asks, "Because regular vampires start off human?"

"Yes."

Trevor says. "But I don't remember Dracula doing any of that and he can do tons of shit."

"He can," Alucard says. "I may be better at it."

Sypha says, "You're not sure?"

"He said I was better at it," Alucard says softly. "I may be."

"You probably are," Trevor says quickly. "It's in the book as a dhampir thing. Regular vampires are more like giant fleas, big on hopping around instead of hovering. At least while fighting." Maybe there was a lot of stuff vampires could do but just not well enough to try while dodging a whip.

"There are that many dhampir around?"

"They're pretty rare but -" Trevor's thoughts, for once, outspeed his mouth. It's not a good thing to be telling Sypha, or that Alucard would appreciate hearing. "Uh. We know about a lot of rare things."

"About how to kill them," Alucard says.

Fine, be an unappreciative little shit. "About how to kill things that kill people," he agrees. "Which dhampir did, what with being vampires and all." And isn't that the understatement of several centuries.

"I thought you said he was barely a vampire."

"Didn't mean like that. Dhampirs didn't get in the bestiary because they were fangy humans we felt would make good trophies. They're just another type of vampire. They're fast, they're good at blending in, they're stupidly durable, and they kill people. My family didn't hunt stuff for the hell of it. We go after trouble."

This would be a good point for Alucard to say something about not killing people.

Sypha, instead, breaks the growing silence with, "But Alucard isn't trouble."

Trevor rolls his eyes.

"I will not be troubling the world further once this is done," Alucard says, like anyone had fucking asked that of him.

"You -" Trevor starts to shout, and finds himself on the floor retching bile. Ugh, he'd forgotten how much it hurt to try to throw up on an empty stomach.

"Belmont? Are you all right?"

"He'll be fine once he staggers back to a tavern." The disapproval is positively dripping off Alucard.

"I just need some water."

"Yes, the kind that has alcohol in it."

"Eat shit and die," Trevor manages, getting upright. He tries to spit to clear the taste from his mouth but his tongue is leather.

"I doubt your blood would kill me."

Trevor manages a chuckle that doesn't end with his stomach trying to climb out his throat. "Not right now, no." Actually, it might not've worked on Alucard anyway. Like he'd just said, dhampir were fucking durable. "Would it give you my headache? That'd be worth it."

"No. Just worsen yours."

"Then I want water."

Alucard makes an uncertain sound. "From the state of the river, I'm not sure that would be much improvement."

"We've got clean water," Sypha assures Alucard. "Filtered and boiled -" She stops. "You're not planning to insist on drinking right out of the river, are you?"

"I feel bad enough without trying to shit my guts out."

"But you were saying boiling doesn't do anything."

"Yeah? The water's safe to drink because of the herbs you put in it."

Sypha just looks confused.

"You lied to me!" Trevor realizes. "Sypha! You said the plants kept it from making people sick when they drank it!"

"Hm," Sypha says, not looking at all sorry at the idea. "I guess I would do that."

"I can't believe you! Why would you lie to me?"

"Was I boiling water at the time, and you said you were going to drink straight out of that river instead?"

"No one wants to drink out of that fucking river!" Trevor says. "It was a perfectly good stream with no dead bodies in it."

"I'm sorry that, in the future, you're pigheaded," Sypha says. "Did you get sick on boiled water, or does the future prove me right?"

"That's not proof," Trevor insists. "I barely get sick anyway."

"So you know I'm right."

"I didn't get sick off normal water either usually."

"How would you even notice?" Alucard asks. "Vomiting, fever..."

"I'm familiar, thanks, I can tell the difference."

"So you've attempted to stop drinking before."

"You probably haven't heard because you just teleported everywhere but to get from one place to another, people have to walk through big tracks of nothing that lack ale and sometimes there's enough nothing that it's a real pain in the ass. But I'm not going to get drunk if I've got to be sober, alright? I just usually didn't."

"You say such believable things."

Trevor flips him off. He feels like shit and this argument is not getting him any closer to water with apparently unnecessary plants in it so he starts for the doorway.

Alucard absolutely pauses at the threshold and stares out at the now sunlit Gresit with obvious trepidation because yeah, everyone but Trevor is a liar.

"Feel free to stay here!" Trevor tells him. "I know how much you love lying about in a dark hole doing nothing instead of getting sun on you."

Alucard glowers at him, lies again that, "I'm not harmed by sunlight," and then steps deliberately out. Because Alucard is also a complete ass, he proceeds to dog their steps so close he could bite. It's a good thing this didn't actually happen because Trevor probably would've put a dagger in him back then and then Trevor'd have gotten punched again and...yeah, it's a really good thing this is only happening when Trevor's already dead.

Is Alucard just being annoying or does sunlight make him peckish? It's not that he's trying to stick to their shadows because the sun's on their left. Maybe it's more wakeup-weirdness. Vampires do everything slow but kill people, maybe it takes them all day to stop being groggy creeps.

Definitely something about the sun, whatever it is, because as soon as they get indoors he backs himself into a corner away from them again.

Well, it's one of the many, many things that aren't Trevor's problem. There's both food and water here and he knows better now than to get anywhere near the injured. He'll sit around - ha, he doesn't have to stay up worrying either - until Sypha admits he's right and they finally leave.

And this time Alucard is stuck staring at him ready for him to do something terrible instead of the other way around. This is great, it really is.

Sypha sighs at the door. "Alucard, can you manage not to kill Belmont while I'm gone?"

"Perhaps."

"I want an actual yes," she says.

"We all want things."

"_Alucard_," Sypha grinds out.

"Yes," Alucard says.

"It'll be fine," Trevor tells Sypha. "Relax." She gives him an irritated look and leaves. Alucard resumes staring across the room at Trevor in what is likely as intentionally predatory and threatening as Alucard can manage.

He grins back smugly.

Trevor drinks a mug of cold water, puts more on the fire, and starts in on an apple.

"What are you doing?"

"Want an apple?"

"No."

He throws another apple at Alucard, who catches it. "If you want your food liquid you can throw it in the pot."

"You're attempting to cook food, then. Have you ever done so before? That looks like a kettle."

"Yeah, I'm cold." Well, feverish more like, but still. "And hot leaf water's tastier."

Alucard gives him a disgusted look. "Have you been talking about chay this whole time?"

"The plants, oh, yeah, they're chay," Trevor says, dimly remembering the word coming up. "Unless Sypha was fucking with me about that too, but no, the other Speakers wouldn't be in on that, would they. They never met her." Or if they had they'd kept their mouths shut about it and Trevor sure didn't fucking deserve that.

Alucard sighs. "It's not a type of plant."

"They're definitely dried plants. Even I can tell that much."

"They're not the same kind of plant. There are a variety of different species used."

"Uh," Trevor says. "Okay?" Alucard picks the weirdest things to be bothered about.

"It's like you're saying, 'The plants I use for this are named plants I use.'"

Trevor shrugs. "That seems like a great idea. Really straightforward." He returns to chewing through his apple. Alucard replaces the apple Trevor threw at him and watches Trevor suspiciously as he drinks, and eats another apple, and drinks, and lies back on the floor.

"You could easily turn out to die in your sleep," Alucard tells him. "Sypha wouldn't know the difference."

He doesn't bother opening his eyes. "Like I'd be so lucky."

"I could kill you."

"Yeah, I heard you the first time." And if Alucard has a retort for that, it takes him long enough to think of that Trevor's asleep.


	9. Infection

He startles awake a few hours later, not any more dead than he was to start with because yeah, like he'd be so lucky. The only thing Alucard's bothered to do is move from the wall away from the fire to the one next to the fire, practically sitting on top of it. Trevor suspects vampire magic is involved because he really should be wrecking his clothes from the embers.

Trevor presses his palm against the side of his impossibly intact neck while pondering his options. This has the potential to be extremely boring. Hm.

"Enjoying Gresit?" he asks.

Alucard just stares at him impassively.

"Really feeling good about your decision to stick around this crumbling pile of shit?"

"Yes."

"Maybe you could explain your genius vampire plan. Because I'm a total idiot, so I can't figure out how sitting around for days just to annoy me helps everyone."

"It's not to annoy you."

"_Bull_ fucking_ shit_. You wanted to leave and you're only doing this because I agreed with that."

"I was mistaken. I initially believed… The monsters under the mausoleum were there for months already."

"And…?"

"If they were meant to do anything more, there was ample time."

Alright, so he's not concerned about those monsters in particular, but, "But the giant swarm of demons _is_ doing things, and we need to go deal with that."

"And as I'm sure you're well aware, my father's castle can move," Alucard tells him with condescending slowness.

"I don't work for your dad," Trevor says yet again. Fuck, Alucard's really stuck on that.

Ignoring Trevor's very good point, Alucard continues, "I do not know its current location or have any way to reach it."

"What if I said I- " Trevor tries.

Alucard just says over him, "His most likely action will be to move the castle here once he learns his creatures have been killed off."

So there was more to it than just refusing to do what Trevor wanted. And, fair, he can see the reasoning. Explains why Alucard hadn't objected to just sitting around the last time either. "Dracula won't, though."

"I believe he will."

"I don't know why you'd want the castle here anyway," Trevor says. "You really want to see people get their faces blown off by the shockwave when it arrives?"

"The castle can move seamlessly," Alucard says in offended tones. "That would be pointlessly sadis...tic...yes, I see what you mean." He's silent a moment, one hand fidgeting at his scar, then, "There is nothing I can do to prevent that. It will happen whether or not we are actually here."

"Except the castle won't be here. And it'll be hopping around the rest of Wallachia instead."

"As you are also aware," Alucard continues, now with obvious irritation, "I do not believe you or anything you say."

Okay, yeah, that was a problem. Trevor sighs. "So we wait around until you realize you're wrong about this and everything, and that the castle won't show up." And it was nice to get a chance to eat and sleep and breathe but he's done that, it's not exactly like he's got to worry about his health, and if he's not going to get drunk he really doesn't want to spend time with his own thoughts. Really, really doesn't. It's exhausting, thinking around things all the things he isn't and is never thinking about, and he's apparently got to keep it up for the rest of eternity. "You're still totally fine with the sun, right?" Trevor asks, getting to his feet. "No reason to stick around inside?"

Alucard gives him a tired look. He stands in a way that involves kicking apart whatever doodles he made on the floor, underlining Trevor's previous statement about how ungodly boring Alucard can be when he sets his mind to it.

"Great. Everyone's been talking about the sleeping soldier, they'll be so happy to see I've actually got them their vampire messiah." He grabs Alucard and starts toward the door, only to be jolted to a stop by the fact Alucard isn't moving. He yanks. It's like he's pulling the hand of a statue. For that matter, he'd probably do better with an actual statue. He's pretty sure he'd have managed to tip an Alucard-sized one by now.

"What are you doing?"

"We're going to introduce you to what's left of Gresit," Trevor says, digging in his heels to no avail. "You can give a big fangy smile at everyone. It'll be great."

"No."

"Are you still doing the whole opposite thing? Being the messiah was your idea!" Since pulling isn't working, Trevor tries shoving. Alucard has made the novice mistake of not hugging the wall, so Trevor gets between and braces on that. Alucard still doesn't move. "Stop being petty." Trevor puts one and then both feet against the wall and pushes as hard as he can right as Alucard teleports sideways. "Ow," he says from the floor. "Rude, Alucard. Rude."

"What are you doing now?" Sypha asks from the doorway.

"Sypha!" He springs back to his feet. "We need to make Alucard go give a speech to everyone!"

"Need," Sypha repeats dubiously.

"I regret never getting this chance," he tells her. "It'll be fucking hilarious."

"No," Alucard repeats.

"I don't think he's interested in doing that."

"Who cares what he wants?" Trevor says reasonably. "What I want is to point at Alucard and tell everyone the Church failed them and they're going to get saved by a vampire."

Sypha sighs. "That seems pointless at best."

"What? No. I mean," he admits, "it is, God, I get that, I completely get that, but it wouldn't have been. It wasn't once you actually told the story afterward. I wasn't sure it was a good idea but it was. It really was. A fucking vampire was a better person than the whole of the clergy! So let's just tell them now."

"Well. Putting that aside for the moment, Alucard, you're familiar with, you said 'infection of the circulatory system'? Is there any treatment for it?"

"Are you truly concerned with what he said? It was transparently just to convince us to leave."

She shakes her head. "I went down near the start of things, but of the handful who survived attacks previous nights, all either died or are dying, and there's already signs of it in the injured from last night."

"Strange. That would require contamination, and even then, the timing... You are heating the knives between use, correct?"

"What?" Sypha says.

"You've confused doctoring and torturing," Trevor tells him. "Easy mistake to make when your dad's fucking Dracula I guess."

Alucard sighs. "So you did not clean the knives."

"We use salves and bandages," Sypha tells him. "We didn't cut anyone."

Alucard is silent. After several moments, he opens his mouth, pauses again, shuts it.

"Is it actually treated by bloodletting?" Sypha asks finally. "That's not one of our practices."

And that gets him talking again: "I was referring to debridement and amputation. The most likely cause of mass infection would be improperly sterilized knives. An actual treatment… You would not have it on hand, or the materials to make it, or the materials to make those, or the materials to make those… Surgical removal of the tissue before the infection can set in could work. It wouldn't make things worse, at the least."

"You seriously think hacking them up can't make it worse, did you pay any attention at all -" Trevor starts, then regrets it. "Nope, never mind, don't care."

"I think removing the tissue would be your best option," Alucard says.

Sypha just stands there looking distressed so, "If they cut people up and then the people die they'll get blamed for it," Trevor explains, because apparently Alucard needs the fucking obvious pointed out. "You really don't know anything, do you?"

"I have not had reason to concern myself with how humans blame each other."

Really, it's a wonder his mom made it all the way to old age before being turned into ashes if this is the sort of attitude they had about common fucking sense.

Alucard eyes the open doorway like it's the gate to Hell. Vampires: even in actual Hell, still dramatic about everything. After a moment, he continues, "I have experience with surgery. And… Belmont says the people are all familiar with the story of the soldier. If I involve myself in that capacity there may be allowances there would not normally be, and even if not, your people won't be blamed."

That's the sort of stupidity you'd expect from an idiot who just admitted he has no idea how good humans are at finding excuses to blame each other.

"Great, have fun cutting everyone apart. Maybe drool all over them too."

"I'm not going to eat the injured people," Alucard snaps.

"You said he didn't eat people," Sypha agrees. "Don't be mean."

"Yeah, I didn't - I mean it's like you're reverse cats. Is that only regular vampires?"

"What are you talking about?"

"What's a reverse cat? I've never heard of such a monster."

Trevor sighs. "I mean, if a cat bites you, it's going to get full of pus, right?" Sypha nods like _well obviously _while Alucard just looks baffled. What the fuck has Alucard even been doing with all his time? "And they get their spit all over their claws and if those scratch you it's almost as bad. Cats are just spewing with life, it's why they have nine lives and all that."

"I don't think that's how cats work," Sypha says.

"It definitely is. Monster cats are even worse, you get so much as nicked by those things and you're lucky if you're only laid up for weeks. And vampires are the opposite. Mom got half her face torn off and it healed so clean she could even talk okay."

"Perhaps because vampires know how to _wash their hands_," Alucard says in absolute disgusted horror.

"You were just going on about how bad the river here is!"

"Not with -" Alucard stops, then says, "I can't disinfect wounds by spitting in them. It is a wonder any of your family lived long enough to find monsters to fight."

"Alright, fine. Hack people open and don't drool on them, then. Don't care how you waste your time."

Alucard is silent then says to Sypha as if the words physically pain him, "He'll have to come as well."

"Not happening." Trevor takes a step back and then sits down, crossing his arms.

"Unfortunately," Alucard adds.

"I'm just going to stay here doing nothing. What, you're the only one who gets to do that? I can't conspire with anyone because, as you can see, there's no one here."

"Do you think I'm blind in the sunlight?" Alucard snaps. "There are crows everywhere."

"You can talk to crows?! What the fuck, Alucard, that'd have been good to know."

"Anyone can talk to crows." Alucard sounds testy, of all things, like he's not the one being incredibly pedantic about this. "They have ears."

"They don't, actually," Sypha says. "They're birds."

"They have internal ears." Is that Alucard's excuse for every time he's wrong, that it's invisible? "Most animals don't have external- "

"Look: I don't care," Trevor interrupts. "You know what I fucking meant."

"It's a common skill," Alucard says, looking away

"Ha, you can't, can you? Dracula can but not you."

"My father doesn't use them," Alucard says with sudden bitterness, "he didn't think they were worth listening to." Then, "But you're not a creature of my father's either. You're someone else's."

Trevor rolls his eyes. "Whose? Don't know if you noticed but this all is Dracula's thing."

"I'm not yet sure. Perhaps once I figure out your purpose."

"I told you, I'm here to help kill Dracula."

"And perhaps you even believe that," Alucard allows graciously.

"If I believe it, then why would I rat you out to a bunch of crows?"

Alucard flickers and is abruptly right in Trevor's face, eyes glowing red. "Is there so little left in your skull, Belmont, that you can't even perceive anything wrong with yourself?"

"God, fine. Fine!" he tells the ceiling. "I'll keep my mouth shut."

"This is exactly what I mean."

"You're right, okay! Why would you trust me? You never did. Fuck you for that, by the way, you're the unreliable piece of shit. But if it bothers you so much I'll shut up. Are there any other animals you'll throw a snit about me being near? Owls?"

"Owls?"

"Don't vampires love owls?"

"I was not aware anyone had strong feelings about owls."

"Huh. Why?"

"Why...people don't care about owls?" Alucard says slowly.

"Owls are idiots," Sypha says with certainty. "I met a pet one once. And they stay in one place. But crows...they talk to each other. That's the real issue, isn't it? Even if whoever you're worried about isn't nearby, word would get back to them. Are there other animals like that?"

"A number of other birds, but none are as good at it. Rats are similar but very local, which does not fit the breadth of knowledge he's displayed. Though with magic- "

"I thought this was all magic," Trevor interrupts.

"With magic," Alucard repeats with irritation, "it's possible to directly see or hear through a specific creature. Belmont, why bring up owls in particular?"

"They're creepy, sleep all day, and I saw this one above a pile of headless dead animals chowing down on yet another rabbit's head," Trevor says. "Figured vampires would go for an animal as thrilled at wasteful baby-eating gluttony as they are."

Alucard seems to miss the obvious insult there and only says, "So we don't need to concern ourselves with a particular magic owl, then, you just have a grudge against a wild animal. Crows are most likely what you're meant to talk to."

Sypha asks, "...do you think he's enthralled?"

"Vampires can't enthrall people," he and Alucard say at the same time.

"I thought so!" Sypha says, sounding just delighted. "The stories never match up properly. It's an excuse, isn't it? To explain away human involvement."

"It is a more acceptable explanation," Alucard says carefully.

"It sounds better for vampires than that they're torturing somebody's family to make them do what they want," Trevor says.

"And it sounds better for humans than that they treat each other so badly there's always plenty willing to do anything for revenge," Alucard retorts.

Sypha waves a hand dismissively. "Yes yes, everyone's very terrible, but to my point: if he's not enthralled then...what, exactly? Why are you so confident he'll betray us? What do you think is going on?"

"As I said, he's mad," Alucard says with an extremely insulting amount of confidence. "And that must have been done to him, which means there is a reason behind it. He's more...intact than I would expect, for that, but it's possible to put things back together so the damage isn't evident. Or they could be talented enough at what they do it wasn't necessary."

"So not magic."

"Not for the most part, at least. There are some who can alter memories- "

"I did not get my head fucked with by a monster," Trevor says, now even more insulted. "Just how incompetent do you think I am?"

Alucard agrees, "If any incubi were involved, I'd think they'd have managed to make something more convincing out of you. Perhaps if one were pressed for time…? It doesn't seem likely. And it wouldn't surprise me if Belmonts are thickheaded enough to actually be immune to such things. Incubi need_ something_ to work with." Only Alucard would sound so dismissive of how Trevor's family fucking aced their job.

Sypha sighs. "So there's no spell to break or evidence of anything that could confirm your suspicions. And the possibility he's gone mad because he sees the future?"

"I'm not crazy either," Trevor objects.

"That's not how the future works!" Alucard snaps.

"I know, I know!" Trevor shouts back. "Look, it doesn't fucking matter! None of this does!"

"Then there's no issue with you coming with us," Sypha says, attempting to wrench the conversation back on track.

"If I didn't want to see a bunch of regular dead people why would I want to watch ones getting extra mangled by Alucard?"

"I'm not going to 'mangle' anyone."

"And boiling water's magic, sure."

"You wouldn't have to come inside," Sypha offers, like any of it is going to be quiet.

"God, really? I don't - I already fucking - no, fine, fine, fucking fine! I get it!" He throws up his hands and gets to his feet. "It'll just be something worse! I say I don't care what Alucard does and now it's fucking hacking everyone apart, so fine, I'm going!"

"Don't tell them they're dead people," Sypha says as they approach, like he hasn't done a perfectly good job of keeping his mouth shut talking to her. "Belmont, can you remember that, don't tell them they're dead people."

"I know," he says instead. "You guys are the ones who insist on talking to them and shit, I already knew better than to chat."

And she shouldn't have been concerned about him, anyway, because apparently 'bedside manner' is yet another thing Alucard's mom never thought to tell him about, along with 'what a doctor actually is'. Alucard walks in, looks everyone over, and then starts strangling one in the corner.

That was really not how Trevor expected this to go.

The man doesn't even struggle, just twitches twice and goes limp. Sypha's reacting faster than the other Speakers, running over as Alucard releases the man's neck only to grab his knee with one hand and dig the other into the raw flesh. His fingers wrap around the broken shin and yank it out as smoothly as if he's deboning a pheasant.

"What the fuck," Trevor whispers.

Alucard looks at Sypha grabbing his arm with slight confusion. Then he looks back down, grabs the cleaver, and hacks into what's left of the leg to carve out a fat triangle of flesh. It wobbles as he pushes it aside.

At this point the man wakes up and, a moment later, howls, probably even more from the shock than the pain.

Alucard doesn't care. Alucard doesn't care about fucking anything, apparently, and just tells Sypha they should sew this up now.

To be honest Trevor kind of gets that now too. He spent the whole walk here thinking about how it'd gone. And this isn't it. These people aren't those people. That guy Alucard just carved up, Trevor never saw him here. In reality, he died at the start or he's fine or maybe something nasty happened to him after Trevor left Gresit but whatever it actually was, this never happened to the poor bastard. All the suffering is fake. None of it's really happening. Nothing is ever really going to happen again.

And at least that means none of it can be his fault.

Alucard starts to move and Sypha gets in the way. She hisses something that's almost certainly about strangling people and Alucard looks mildly irritated, like not strangling people he's supposed to be helping is a completely unreasonable thing to ask. "I'm not impeding their breathing. I can do this more safely than chemical anesthesia would be." He steps around her.

"Than what?"

Alucard has the gall to sigh. "I know how to do this."

"Shouldn't you remove your gloves," Sypha manages.

And talk about clothing makes Alucard actually pause, because priorities are yet another thing Alucard never figured out. In a quiet voice that's hard to hear over the noise he says, "They're - I fear this gives the wrong impression, but a fabric unconsumed by fire." He then demonstrates this by shoving his still-gloved hands into the fire along with the cleaver.

"Salamander fur," Sypha says. He starts to shake his head and she continues, "It's really a rock, I know, but one that can be woven. I thought it irritates skin if worn."

"Worse than that," Alucard says. "The mineral's strands break into an invisible dust" - what is with Alucard and everything being invisible - "so that even breathing near the cloth would be harmful to you. What I am wearing was made from greater salamanders." Which goes a ways to explaining why fire is still licking around Alucard's hands and he doesn't seem to notice, as well as his willingness to cuddle up to the one in the hearth earlier.

Wait.

Okay, so Alucard wouldn't be wearing poison cloth around people and instead dresses in dead salamander. That makes sense. But Trevor's seen Sypha burning other vampires and a bunch of those also didn't catch on fire like he'd expect... Is being decked out in poison rock standard?

Trevor heads over, his eyes weaving around to stay on the parts of the room that aren't people. "Is the rock fur toxic to vampires too?" he asks as Alucard removes his hands and shakes off the embers.

"It's not fur," Alucard says, and maybe this is an undocumented vampire weakness, maybe you can say stuff until they just die of frustration over how exactly you worded it, "it's a mineral fiber."

Alucard yanks an arm out of the socket. That's an interesting sound. More splattery than when Trevor dislocated his.

"Rock fiber, fine, does it poison vampires?"

"No."

Well, that's something to keep in mind. If his ghost gets summoned, 'vampires can wear poisoned shit, don't take anything unburnable as a trophy, yeah what assholes right?' is another thing to bring up. Maybe he should start taking notes. No, he wouldn't be summoned with his notes, would he? Well, maybe, ghosts weren't summoned naked so some stuff came with them, but he never heard of a ghost changing their outfits either, so probably he'd only have what he did when he died.

That'd be weird, actually, to suddenly not have all the stuff he does now. What would he have on him even? He'd lost his sword, so no weapon at all…? That sucks. He's pretty sure it was still close so maybe that'd count. He presses his hand against his throat and wonders if he'd even be able to talk. Hopefully. If he has to write everything in ghost-blood that's going to be really fucking tedious. Well, at least he knows whoever it'll be won't have trouble reading if it he does, so that's good. For people who hate books they're sure thorough about that.

Alucard reaches into a gash over someone's stomach and pulls back the skin to get a better look.

Huh. Trevor really thought that of all things would have some impact but here it is just happening right in front of him and nice try, God, but apparently nope to that too. There's just nothing as Alucard slices the flesh open further and stares inside, nothing as he calls the Speakers over and tells them to hold the flap of skin and muscle up, nothing as he reaches in and starts pulling her coiled guts out. He pokes around, then goes, "Hm," then bites the finger of his gore-covered glove to pull it off and reaches back in with his bare hand.

It is sort of impressive how exceptionally shitty Alucard is at this. It's not what he was picturing back when he was saying vampires should never be allowed near injured people but it's still proving him right and that's what's really important here.

"You should flush the cavity with saline," Alucard says with remarkably good elocution given the glove still dangling from his mouth. Must be all that practice talking hiding fangs. "That's… I suppose you wouldn't have it." Alucard pauses, then gestures with his bloody hand at their faces, perhaps because he's still got the other one on the woman's neck. "Can you make a solution that's as salty as tears? It needs to be the right amount of salt," he says and now Trevor is completely sure that yeah, whatever this is is definitely just repurposed torture techniques from Dracula, or possibly recipes. Which is weird because he'd insisted his mom had also learned from the guy, but maybe she was better at figuring out useful parts because she actually was human while vampires think it's just normal to collect bottles of human tears to brine people's intestines. Alternatively, maybe his mom was an idiot to go with the rest of the family, the only one who's claimed she knew what she was doing is Alucard and obviously he has no idea.

Sypha says -

Everything snaps into focus.

He bolts.


	10. Stones

"I'm sorry," he tells Sypha when she follows him out. He doesn't want to look at her and he doesn't want to look away and he ends up staring at the space next to her so she's there in the corner of his vision. "I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry."

She shakes her head, says, "No, I am," and he can't make sense of that - sorry for what, for her belief decision recklessness haste asking that of him expecting that of him and he wants so badly for her to be sorry for any of it and he hates himself so much for wanting her to be sorry because how can he be angry at her how fucking dare he - and then she continues with, "I knew how much you didn't want to come here."

He laughs. And laughs. And slides down the side of the wall and keeps laughing, and then he manages, "No. It's fine. They're - they're all fine. They're not the ones who died."

"The people inside?"

"Yeah. They're fine."

Sypha asks, "Do you mean, you can see what happens to them?"

"What happened to them is they were never in there," Trevor explains. "Not the real ones."

"Oh," Sypha says, and she sounds despairing.

"What? What's wrong?"

"You're not getting it mixed up," she says.

For a moment, Trevor thinks that means this finally stops. But then the next moment comes, and the next, and he's still sitting there on the ground with his back against some gore-splattered wall.

And -

Maybe that's what makes it Hell, that even knowing what it is you can't let it go.

He wasn't forced to come here and he wasn't forced to get them and he knew there was no them and he did it anyway. And he could've just gone but he didn't and he doesn't. He almost says he's sorry again because he is, because how fucking selfish can he be, knowing she isn't really here but pretending anyway.

Not even the first fucking time he did that.

He thought when he died it'd all stop. Why can't anything work out for him?

"Sypha, did you figure something out or not?" Alucard asks. He's lurking in the shade of the doorway because lurking, that's a vampire thing. Cleaned the blood off the side of his face, at least.

"Yes, not right now, how is everyone?"

Alucard's voice drops to barely audible. "I doubt any of them will survive."

"I'm right, see, I told you," Trevor hisses, then, "Wait, so what the fuck was all that then? You understand pain, right? Not stupid emotional bullshit but what humans feel when you remove chunks of them? Why would you just do something like that when it's not even going to help?"

"It might work and it might not, I don't know very much about curses. I was only taught to recognize them."

"It's a curse?" Sypha repeats, then sadly, "Oh, that does make sense."

"It does not, curses aren't being sick," Trevor tells them.

"The timing is too fast," Sypha says. "And it's the same for everyone."

"Then why did you do all of that?" Trevor howls.

"It would need to be done either way. And it's transmitted by touch, so it's possible removing the contaminated area works." It's clear from Alucard's tone that he's aware that's not, at all, going to work.

Trevor stands up. "How did Dracula not tell you how to deal with curses? You had time to learn all about torture!"

"It was unlikely I'd need to deal with one and I did not torture anyone."

"You live forever, it'd have come up eventually!"

Alucard steps out of the doorway to yell back, "I didn't realize I had this little time!"

And then some other person calls, "Belmont."

"Oh no," whispers Sypha.

Alucard stops dead still.

And the person asks, "Is that- "

Sypha hisses, "Belmont, no."

"Yes!" Trevor shouts. "I got you your sleeping soldier! He's- "

Sypha claps her hand over his mouth. Like that's going to stop him. He twists loose and shouts, "Mh a vampire a vampire is going to stake Dracula for you isn't that great!"

"Why," Sypha groans. She covers her face with her hands.

Alucard just doesn't move. That's fine, Trevor can do this himself.

"He's the son of the woman your bishop murdered!" Trevor continues at top volume. More people are trickling over, excellent. "Dracula's fucking kid! And he still saves all of you because his mother was a better person than probably everyone here!" He claps Alucard on the back which continues to be like interacting with an actual literal statue. God damn he does not remember Alucard being quite this bad in sunlight. "Alucard, smile at the crowd," he adds. "They don't believe half of what I say."

Proving his point, someone says, "Wait, if vampires can stand sunlight than revenants -"

"Again: not a revenant! But he is a vampire, it's that he's half-human, I just said his mother was human, come on Alucard, introduce yourself, you do it better than me."

And Alucard finally manages to start up again and runs through a barely modified version of what he told the Speakers. Yeah, that's definitely a prepared speech. Weird, Alucard.

Trevor should probably have mentioned that he should reconsider introducing himself with "of Wallachia" after "Alucard" but it looks like everyone's taking that as just how monster names work and not that his mother fucked enough vampires that Dracula wouldn't acknowledge the kid as his. Were his parents married, actually? Dracula had that ring but how the fuck would that have worked? Can vampires enter into unholy matrimony? See, that just raises all sorts of questions about unchurches and unholy water and and unJesuses.

Ugh, unholy water. He's glad that doesn't exist. Holy water fucking hurts when it goes off.

"But you need to disperse!" Sypha cuts in. "The injured within are - are suffering from curses that could spread to you! Please, for your own safety, leave this area and tell everyone else to not come near as well!"

"Sypha," Trevor whines as this works. "You can't just lie to people to make them do what you want."

"And you, what is wrong with -" And then she makes a frustrated growl. "No, I know what's wrong with you. Please. _Pretend_ there are consequences to your actions before you do things."

"What do you think I just did?" Trevor demands.

"Something incredibly stupid."

"You were the one who thought telling everyone the truth was the right thing to do! And it wasn't stupid, it worked!"

She groans and covers her face again. "Can you go back inside. Is that possible. We could go somewhere else instead if you promise not to yell at anyone on the street on the way."

"Alucard just said he can't fix this either, so can we just get going now?"

"Why?" Sypha asks. "Why leave at all?"

"The Night Horde killing everyone? Our job?"

"But the Night Horde's not real."

Alucard makes a horrified sound. "You now, Sypha? The madness is infectious?"

"No, no, _I_ know they're real, it's - this is not a conversation we should be having where people can overhear. Belmont, please, go inside before anyone else shows up."

"Why? You just saw, telling everyone -"

Alucard's hand locks around his arm and he's yanked inside. The rest of the Speakers are busily stitching flesh. Or holding down other flesh that's objecting to the stitching.

"So you're saying the wounds the demons make are cursed," Sypha whispers, almost drowned out by the noise.

"Yes."

"And you don't know how to undo the curse."

Alucard, who had the time to learn at least a dozen languages, says, "No."

Sypha sighs. "Belmont- " She pauses, looks between him and the various busyness in the room, looks concerned, then grabs him by the shoulder and twists him around so he's facing the wall.

"I'm listening!" he protests. Come on, she can't think he's that distractible.

"Belmont, you thought Alucard should know about breaking curses. Does that mean you know anything about breaking curses?"

"Uh," Trevor admits. "The thing is. They usually wear off over time. So no, but look, they're just about always some fiddly thing that takes forever to figure out and plenty of time once you do you find out it'd be another big production to deal with anyway and it's really not worth it. Waiting it out is just more practical."

"Of course the Belmont solution would be to out-stubborn a curse," Alucard mutters.

"But this one's fatal within a few days."

"Yeah, that's how curses usually are."

Sypha suddenly looks livid. She makes a sort of squeaking sound.

"Oh," Trevor says. "_Rights_oyougetsomethingthat'sgotresonancewiththecurse. So it can't do whatever it was trying to do it. Then after a while the curse runs out of power or gets frustrated or something, I don't know the why of it, and it goes away. And. That is what you could try here. Will try here."

"Yes," Sypha manages through her teeth, the pitch on the edge of his hearing. She closes her eyes, takes several breaths, and then says in merely _I'm going to kill you_ tones, "And we'd do it how."

"No idea." He shrugs. It's not like this is going to actually do anything because Trevor is never actually doing anything now, except possibly that ghost thing and really, he does not think he fucked up so bad that these guys are still running around to trouble future Belmonts. And he doesn't have any solution anyway. "Demons don't do that normally, and if anything about this was curse-y I'd have mentioned it the first time. Curses are usually like turning to mud and so you swallow pebbles, you know, obvious problems and solutions like that. Not supposed to be your own bits going wrong at you. Bad blood… Shit, is it feeding people human flesh? So halfway in they'd turn into weretigers. Fucking hate those. This is a terrible plan." Maybe if nobody told them nothing would happen, knowing's supposed to be part of what does it, but Trevor's pretty sure the only people in Gresit who knew how to keep deadly secrets are currently painted across the no-longer-a-church.

Least he doesn't have to feel bad about not figuring it out. Fucking weretigers. That's just a way of dying that pays it forward. Figures Dracula would even booby-trap curses.

Alucard says, "_There is no such thing as bad blood._ It's the result of infection, just one supernaturally powered. Presumably the trick of it is that the normal treatment for something so severe does not involve it being fed to the victim and - at least I assume - if things like topical application were an option Belmont wouldn't have been eating rocks. Everything else aside, you understand that eating rocks can kill you? Bowel impaction followed by rupturing."

"Pebbles." Trevor holds up his finger and thumb a pebble's-width apart to illustrate how not a big deal that is, honestly. "And turning to mud definitely kills you and then you get back up and kill more people. It's called responsibility, Alucard."

Alucard gives him a remarkably judgy look for someone on the wrong side of the argument, then continues, "If the curse's stopgap is a counter to infection, then it still requires the same materials as a treatment for the disease, which I do not have or the ability to create within this timeframe."

"Stones stop you from being turned into mud," Sypha says thoughtfully, like this is news to her. "Mud ghouls, right? I've heard if they kill you you become one of them. But stones. Pebbles. Hm. Alucard, you're sure we don't have what you need on hand. What is it?"

"Antibiotics."

"Saying stuff in Greek doesn't make you more right," Trevor complains.

"A substance that kills the most abundant forms of life," Alucard says casually, like the idea of Dracula having that on hand isn't completely horrifying. "It's...I wouldn't know where to begin. There are different types of life... Oh, cheese. You know about cheese, surely."

"Dead calves and their stomachs?" Trevor says. "If your solution is dead babies that's fucked up but I guess there's probably a bunch lying around already. Pretty sure it's still going to count as cannibalism, though, so: weretigers. Bad."

"Keep your voice down!"

"I am! And nobody heard anything, they're all busy screaming."

"I'm speaking of mold, not rennet!" Alucard hisses at him. "Which humans do not possess!"

"Your father tried it, didn't he?"

"No!"

"The mold, what about it?" Sypha insists.

"Some particular components of mold kill most sorts of infection."

"So your plan is to kill them with poisoned food before the disease gets them."

"Belmont, knock it off. Alucard, why does it have to be that? What about other things that fight infection?"

"Things like alcohol are too indiscriminate a poison. The people would die faster than bacteria." What is with Alucard and Greek? Is that where Dracula's actually from?

"But what about something like onions?"

"Onions?"

"Or garlic. The kind of things you'd use in poultices."

"You normally treat infected wounds by putting mashed root vegetables into them?" Alucard says slowly.

"Yeah what a bad idea," Trevor retorts, "using fresh vegetables when they could be filling them with rotten moldy ones instead. You're so helpful. This was a great use of time."

"It's not enough for something this serious normally," Sypha mutters, "but compare eating a rock to the magic needed to turn an entire person into animate mud."

"It's not actually one rock," Trevor says. "I don't want you to have the wrong impression. If you swallow a rock and think you're done you'll be turning back into mud the next day. Or that night. Good way to lose the whole limb before you realize, that."

"You eat bags of rocks because it's easier than actually breaking a curse properly?" Alucard asks.

"Probably easier," Trevor corrects, "yeah."

"This has been enlightening," Sypha says levelly. "One moment."

He turns as she starts to leave and she grabs his shoulder again to turn him back to the wall. "Oh, come on," he complains.

So he's stuck staring at a wall now while Sypha finds her grandfather and whispers about garlic and onions. Shit, now he's hungry _and_ nauseous. And without even getting to drink any of the ale he's suffering over, which, sure it's Hell but that's just unfair.

After a moment, Alucard says softly, "So what's happening here is familiar to you."

"As you heard me tell Sypha, no, different people."

"And it's specific people that concern you?" Alucard asks dubiously.

He groans. "No. God, come on. Didn't know them. You don't need to know people to not want them to die." Really, you have to actually know people to be fine with that, in Trevor's experience.

But that's just Trevor. He really can't speak for Alucard, can he.

Looking back now, it all seems rather obvious. It's not even like Alucard lied. He told them right from the start why he was doing this.

Doesn't change that Trevor's mad about it.

Which reminds him, "Alucard, how much do you know about necromancy?"

"Is that what you are," Alucard says, sounding wondering.

"Wow," Trevor says. "_Less_ than nothing."

"Yes, despite everything about him, Belmont's actually not a revenant," Sypha calls, backing him up for once.

"Obviously not," Alucard says. "I meant a forged thing."

"Those _glow_," Trevor points out, appalled. "I mean, there's about a million other problems but the glow is pretty definite. How do you not know something so basic?"

Alucard says defensively, "There could be a way around that. Forging corpses -"

"This was a mistake back out both of you." In yet another colossal unfairness, when Sypha shoves them Alucard actually moves.

"The glow is only literally animating forged undead," Trevor complains. "Of course it could just not be there!"

"Not all kinds of light are visible, so it's entirely possible-"

"Now _light_ can be invisible?! Are you - doesn't matter. Don't care. I just wanted to know if you could do necromancy or not." And now he does. Of course! Why the fuck did he ever think Alucard would've been any help?

He considers if finding this out this makes him less angry at Alucard.

No, it turns out. Still furious.

"Stop talking about nec-" Sypha hisses, then, "Oh no," at the sight of people outside. "I said to keep away from here."

Ha. Like that'd work. Trevor grins. Finally, the fact everyone in Gresit is an idiot who makes terrible choices is working for him.

"Alucard, how far can you teleport, can you take anyone with you," Sypha whispers desperately. Basically nowhere and absolutely nope, Sypha! It's not going to work.

Trevor does not get to say this because Alucard grabs him around the side like he's a sack of flour and jumps.


	11. Demons

Alucard _could_ set him down again, but no, Trevor is chucked inside the house to bang into the wall. "Fuck you're cranky," he says as Alucard slams the door behind them. "And the sun can't be that bad if you can still sprint around like that."

There's a whole lot of nothing from Alucard, who is just doing his statue impression again in front of the shut door.

Trevor waits. He can totally do sitting around nothing if he has to, not like there's anything to actually do. He'll out-lazy Alucard. He just -

"Shit." Trevor jumps up and takes a step toward the door. Alucard somehow manages to loom without technically moving from where he's planted. "How far - you'd hear if something was going wrong, right? With Sypha?"

"Don't you know the future?"

_"ANSWER THE FUCKING QUESTION!"_

Alucard looks taken aback. "There's nothing dangerous."

"Really every other human in the entire goddamn city just vanished?" Alucard is still not moving from the door. "I'll keep quiet," Trevor bargains, "I can keep quiet. I'll be completely silent and not say anything to anyone outside. So we can go back out now."

"What makes you think the Scholar who helps us kill Dracula is in danger from some human here?"

He can't actually move Alucard from the door.

Even now Alucard is managing suspicion verging on outright paranoia without actual wariness, because he's an arrogant vampire bastard, so Trevor can definitely get in a stab, especially when he didn't break his sword in a pointless fight. Enough to actually make Alucard go down, probably. Shortsword through the collarbone does that.

But that doesn't matter because if Alucard goes down, Trevor gets maybe ten feet before Alucard pops right back up because fucking vampire healing magic bullshit.

Trevor isn't actually going to get anywhere while Alucard's alive.

"I'll stay here if you want that instead," he pleads, "inside, away from crows, is that better? It'll only take you a moment, you'll hardly have to be outside in the sun at all."

He doesn't know anything about stopping vampires that isn't just killing them.

Alucard repeats, "What makes you think the Scholar who helps us kill Dracula is in danger from some human here?" because why would he listen, Trevor's fucked it all up and now he thinks everything Trevor says is some evil trick.

"If she's the Scholar then you need her," Trevor tries to reason. "Your prophecy! Alucard, you want the prophecy to work so badly you're putting up with me, you can't possibly want to lose her."

"You were fine enough with all this to fall asleep just a few hours ago."

And Trevor - "I can't do this. I won't."

"What?"

He presses against the wall and he can't breathe and that's so stupid he doesn't fucking need to breathe. "Kill you. If I don't kill you I can't get past you but then you're dead and I. But she's dead."

"She's alive," Alucard says.

"When she's dead you'll know the prophecy's fake. And that's the only reason you're not killing me, right? It's - it's basically self-defense, you know that, you've got to, this isn't whatever your mother was talking about, you're sure I'll betray you, am betraying you right, and you're trying to save the world, you've got reason, it's not like she meant-"

"_Sypha is alive_." What does he have to be so horrified about? He doesn't believe anything Trevor says, that's the whole problem here!

"It's going to go wrong," he explains. "It shouldn't they shouldn't they didn't but it just is, it can't go wrong the same way because I _know_ and it has to go wrong somehow, something I screwed up or just, that's how it works." It's already something he screwed up, it's because he said the wrong thing before that Alucard won't believe him now.

"You thought people are fine with a vampire but they'll kill a human? A dangerous human, no less?"

"It's just - it's like - you can't understand," he accuses, sick with how much he hates Alucard. Envy envy envy well fuck off God some things are worth envying. "How am I supposed to explain. You don't _sleep_, people who _sleep_ dream and you don't, you obviously don't, you'd never have done it if you could dream."

Alucard, the fucking liar, disputes this.

"I want a drink, God I want to at least be drunk if I have to see this I want to be _blind_ don't you let people have wine."

"Is that - are you hallucinating?" Alucard seems to forget the door for a moment and edges closer. But it doesn't matter, he's too fast to get around.

"Can we just, please just not be here?" he says. "I don't want to see the body." What do Speakers do with the body anyway they said they'd go if he got it for them but they didn't really think Sypha was dead just trying to get him to hang around for their fake prophecy but do Speakers care, is it important, is that yet another fucking failure at his feet?

"Belmont, are you imagining something is here now or are you imagining something in the future and getting upset over that?"

"They'll bring-" There's no air. "They'll-"

He can't breathe. He can't breathe he can't breathe and he can't die of that either not anymore so he still can't breathe.

Alucard tells him Sypha's alive as if Alucard fucking cares.

At some point the door opens. Sypha says, "What did you do?"

"Nothing!"

"Really."

"...I threw him. But it wasn't very hard. He just became upset for no reason."

"After you threw him."

"In a way that was unrelated to anything I did. He suddenly got upset and started asking me if anything had happened to you. The fact you were fine turned out to be immaterial because he was confident you were in danger from someone in Gresit."

"You know, he's been right before."

"And I asked for specifics," Alucard defends. "Besides, I was listening. But he was concerned by the fact other human beings existed nearby, therefore you were certainly about to die or dead already. He got upset imagining it, contemplated trying to kill me to get outside again, got more upset over imagining that, _argued yet again I should kill him_, told me he wasn't capable of explaining anything to me because I don't dream, asked for alcohol, asked to go somewhere else because he didn't want to see your corpse, and finally panicked badly enough he hasn't been able to talk."

"It's been ten minutes."

"_I'm well aware._"

"Belmont?"

"I've tried pointing out you're alive, it doesn't seem to matter."

She's quiet, then, "It must be something about those people. Before we fell down and met you, he organized everyone to fight off the Night Horde. And you heard what he said on the way up again, he thinks half of them are supposed to be dead too, but he was still concerned for them. And I'm also… Yet it's just them he wants nothing to do with. I don't understand it. What's the difference?" Her voice is getting closer. "Belmont?" Her hand touches his arm and he recoils. Then she - "It's okay, it's fine."

"Shut up!" he screams because he can't hear her say this again.

"See, he's just decided to be upset at everything," Alucard complains.

There's silence for a bit, then, "Belmont, you were right! No one cares Alucard is a vampire, so he should've agreed to tell everyone. … … Well, some people care, but only because they think it's good news since it means when more of the Night Horde arrives they'll take orders from him. … ... Wait, is that how it works? Should I tell them that's right, Alucard can and will do that? Oh no, don't tell me that means they're also right that we need to set up some sort of lottery for who he eats tonight?"

"Please tell me that hasn't actually been going on," Alucard says finally.

"Well, possibly not," Sypha waffles. "Yet. It hasn't been very long. And I think they may be assuming that you ate while you were there."

"Wonderful," Alucard mutters. "So. Any other ideas?"

Sypha sighs. "I think it's that I'm supposed to die here."

He covers his ears, which is futile but not more so than fucking everything. Why does she have to keep saying that.

Okay yeah. Of course she would.

His fault really for getting upset.

"You really don't want me to talk at all now," Sypha says. "Why? What's going on?"

"Because you're probably a demon," he mumbles.

Sypha makes a shocked gasp, so did he get that right? Is this how Hell works? Then Alucard says, "Have you decided people are demons before, or just her?"

"That's not fucking funny, Alucard," Trevor snarls.

Then Sypha, her voice hideously flat: "Is that why God wants me dead?"

"No!" He looks up and she's scared of him. She's not scared of anything and she's scared of him. "No, no no no that isn't what I meant that isn't, it's not, that isn't- everything is. Everyone."

"We're all demons?"

He curls back up. "Probably. Yeah. I don't know."

"So you need to kill everyone then," Sypha continues so so flatly.

"No," he tells the floor. "Fuck you. The point isn't killing demons it's protecting people. No people, no killing."

"When did we go from not real to demons?"

Holy shit how fucking stupid does she think he is? He's not giving them advice on how to do their job better.

"Belmont? Belmont?"

"Sypha, can you explain any of this?"

"He doesn't think this is real," Sypha says. "I thought since he remembered the future like it was his past, he was getting confused about what had and hadn't happened yet, but he really does think it's already happened. That's what he meant about the people earlier. He thinks that, in the real world, they're already fine or already dead, so they don't need help here in the present."

"That's not consistent," Alucard complains. "He's been extremely opinionated about the present."

"He was having a breakdown and then he remembered he wanted to tell everyone in the city about how you're a vampire and forgot about it."

"Right, he's insane."

"I'm not," Trevor tells the floor.

"So why are we demons, Belmont? I'm pretty sure we weren't demons before." When he doesn't answer, she says, "What about what you couldn't explain to Alucard, about dreams? I dream." Not that fucking stupid either. "Is it about that? Dreams, a bad dream?"

"So he thinks he's asleep?" Alucard says. "He was asleep earlier, so perhaps he doesn't believe he woke. That's why he was so angry after deciding I don't sleep."

"Belmont, you said you were here to get me. And you wanted to find Alucard. You were happy about it. What changed? What made you think this wasn't real?"

"Nothing," he tells her. His hands are digging into his legs. "I'm sorry. I knew the whole time. I just. Still didn't want to watch it all happen. And I really missed the both of you. Which. I guess. Was all the wrong thing to do. For some reason." He said he was going to watch but he didn't, he was just angry and no one even wanted his help and he hadn't actually, he'd stayed and fought in the end, he'd done what he was supposed to, wasn't that worth anything?

"And what was the right thing?"

"I don't know!" he shouts at the ground. "Doing things shouldn't be the wrong thing to do! I don't know why everything has to be riddles!"

"In your dream?" Sypha persists.

"No, it's - it was an analogy."

"Raving is not an analogy," Alucard tells him.

"It was an analogy that didn't work because you're a fucking vampire who doesn't have to sleep."

"It's not as if _you're_ particularly good at sleeping," Alucard says. "It was like watching someone break a squirrel's back for several hours."

"This is Alucard's fault!" Sypha says.

Alucard sputters, "How is this my fault?"

"It's not his fault," Trevor tries to tell her. "It's nobody's." It's Trevor's.

Sypha ignores him and continues, "You brought up demons that get in people's heads when they're asleep and now we're all demons."

"_You _brought up magic. _I_ said it was unlikely."

"You mentioned demons doing this kind of thing. He got really upset when a priest brought up the idea of him being a monster too."

"I did not," Trevor corrects.

"So, so upset. It was an undead monster…" Sypha adds thoughtfully and is she really not going to just drop this? It doesn't count as murder. "Why did he want to know about necromancy? Did he say anything else about that?"

"He did not."

"Belmont, what did you want Alucard to help with?"

"I was just curious."

She makes the huff she does while rolling her eyes.

"I was," he insists, keeping his own eyes on his knees. "If he'd said yes I wasn't going to ask him to do anything, I just wanted to know."

Sypha, entirely too clever, says, "Well, of course. If we're not real he can't really do anything. So why would you ask? What were you curious about?"

When Trevor doesn't answer her, he hears, "Right. Alucard, what speculation can you offer?"

"It's odd he would even bring it up. Necromancy is largely a human affair," Alucard says. "The same as your abilities."

"Excuse me? Not the same thing."

Alucard says quickly, "Certainly, yes, they're different." He doesn't sound certain of that at all, but that's probably because Trevor's just found yet another gaping hole in Alucard's supposed education. What the fuck was he doing with all that time? How many decades do you need to build holes in the ground? Can vampires not get bored, is that the real problem? "Yours is primarily manifesting rather than transfiguring. But, very generally," Alucard continues carefully, "it's magic that affects the world around you while vampire magic is personal."

Trevor points out, "That's not a real rule. Dracula can throw giant fireballs. Also the fucking demon army is necromancy."

"Because magic can be learned," Alucard says. "It's just harder, and slower, and generally not worth the effort if you don't possess a natural talent for it. Which, for those sorts of magic, vampires do not."

"Oh, but, if you're half-human..."

There's a silent beat that's probably Alucard shaking his head, then, "Belmont has the right of that, at least. Dhampir are better considered a sort of vampire than a sort of human. I was taught fire magic myself but I'm quite terrible at it."

"_Really?_" Sypha says.

Alucard doesn't seem to hear the threat in that. "Yes, it's not an area I have any skill in."

"You must show me."

"...I don't have any skill in it," Alucard repeats.

"I still want to see! It's very rare I meet anyone else who can do magic."

There's a longer pause, then, "Very well." Trevor looks up to see Alucard removing his glove. His hand is wreathed in a very thin layer of translucent fire for a moment, then the flames vanish again.

"Wow," Sypha says in wonder. "You are _garbage_."

"Yes. I said as much," Alucard snaps.

"I have never seen anyone that bad," Sypha continues. "I had some difficulty with the edges of the flames getting _close_ to my skin when I was younger, but…" She shakes her head. "Amazing. There wasn't any visible focus, or separation at all. I was not aware that could even happen. Are you actually burning yourself?"

"Not for such a brief time. They're not particularly hot."

"So can you do anything with it? Burn other people before you burn yourself?"

Alucard sure finds the wall pretty damn interesting all of a sudden. "It's only very narrowly useful. No."

Alucard replaces his glove. Why did he take it off? His glove doesn't burn in a proper fire and he just said he can't even manage that. Were the flames actually so puny they wouldn't even have been visible otherwise?

So Alucard sucks at magic. Or is really fucking lazy and making excuses, which seems more likely. Bastard sure figures out magic doors fast enough once he's motivated.

"So," Sypha says, thoughtful, "Dracula's an exception who does know magic. And I suppose that's also how he's raised the Night Horde."

"No. I was not told what the plan is, but I would guess it's ritual magic taking advantage of already sympathetic areas... If you'd let me drain Belmont of blood, even I could make enough of a flame that it'd immolate his corpse. Kill the rest of the people here and add them to that pile in the river, a few things would crawl back out. You can get around a lot of limitations if you're willing to throw enough bodies at the problem. I sincerely doubt he's making any of these directly. Especially when the focus for necromantic magic is very particular… You have to want what you're making to exist. I can't imagine he does."

Which - "If you did want something to exist, it'd be easier?" Trevor blurts out.

"Not 'easier'. A prerequisite. You need to have a stone before you can even try to wring blood from it. And a vampire would have better luck wringing rocks."

"Belmont, does this have to do with how you kept insisting people were dead?" she asks.

"No," Trevor says. "Besides I told you, they're fine probably."

"The real ones, yes. But the other real ones, who were there, those died."

God, yes, he's aware, he was there for the whole thing. "It's not like I could actually make Alucard do anything," Trevor announces. "I demanded he stay put but he snuck off anyway because I was too exhausted to stay awake and you insisted I was 'being completely unreasonable' just because you felt like sleeping so if he wanted to chop people up or anything he could've because I literally wasn't there to stop him from doing whatever the fuck he felt like!"

After a moment, Alucard asks, "Are you throwing another fit over something you imagined?"

"Oh, like you're not going to go magic the courtyard back together?"

That seems to surprise Alucard. And of course that transmutes directly into fresh glowering suspicion, which is now far more exhausting than it is entertaining.

Does Trevor have to feel bad about being on the other end of that when this happened for real? No, he decides. Alucard pretty much doesn't have feelings.

"Should he not…?" Sypha asks.

"It's probably going to collapse again given his shitty track record but better than nothing. I wouldn't have even complained if he'd told me, and it'd have saved me from running around the next day trying to figure out if he'd killed anybody to do it because why the fuck else would someone sneak around otherwise. My point," Trevor snarls, "is he could've done anything else too and he didn't so it didn't matter what I said!"

"...in the version you remember, I don't involve myself," Alucard says slowly, then glances at Sypha. "You attempt to treat it as a mundane disease, which wouldn't work."

"We know that, though. He expected it to be fatal."

"That's what your issue is, Belmont? This isn't how you think it's supposed to go. "

"Shut up about supposed to!" he screams, and he knows he needs to stop doing that for there to be any chance they'll stop saying it but he can't stand hearing this coming out of their mouths. "There was never any supposed to, it wasn't all part of some fucking plan! You don't even care, you don't care about anything but getting this done, if it's anyone's fault it's yours!"

"Yes," Alucard says.

"No!" he shouts back.

Alucard looks to Sypha again. "You see? He just wants to be upset."

"Are you mad about it being his fault or not?"

"Who cares!"

"You," Sypha claims. "Very obviously you."

"It already _happened_, there's no point going over and over it."

"You're looking for something coherent behind this and there is none," Alucard pronounces like he has any fucking clue. "Belmont is trying to get us out of Gresit. Perhaps he's getting worse because of the stress of contradictions building up. He thought we needed to leave because there was nothing we could do, he's seen this to be wrong, yet he's still compelled to get us to leave by any means he can."

"But why would he want us out of Gresit so badly?" Sypha says, like she hasn't seen Gresit.

"I believe it is to keep us from encountering my father."

"Oh…" Sypha says. "Oh, that… Yes, I've been wondering how to reconcile what he's said about my future, especially if we're never to return here. So he's trying to get us away before Dracula arrives."

"No! What the fuck!" Trevor manages. "We won! That's why we have to leave, so we can do that already! I know Alucard thinks Dracula will come here, but he won't. Sometimes people, they think something's true and it's not and they're just wrong. Who fucking knows why Dracula does things? I didn't even know what Dracula looked like until we killed him! Before that the most anybody knew about was the castle, and we only knew what that looked like inside because Great-Granddad had a broken arm and headed back."

"Ah. Yes, I...heard of that," Alucard says, and continues apologetically, "He killed the others."

"So they did reach him! Ha!" Nice to know his ancestors really had gone down to Dracula himself and not some lackey.

"...and now I better understand why he claimed your family's identifying feature was suicidal stubbornness."

"Wasn't suicide!" Trevor snarls. "They knew they could get killed -"

"_Did_, Belmont. _Did_ get killed."

"- but they tried anyway because someone had to, because whatever you think he was, he was a monster and if any of them had succeeded all this would never have happened, knowing you're going to die isn't the same thing!" It isn't. It doesn't count.

"Then why are you trying to get me to leave?" Sypha says, sounding inexplicably angry. "Doesn't that go for all of us?"

"...Yes?" he says uncertainly, then, "Wait - you - you think - Sypha, you think I wouldn't tell you if Dracula was going to kill you?"

"It would seem so."

He groans and bangs the back of his head against the wall. "No. That's dumb, you're dumb. I even said, you're the one telling the story afterward. The Dracula thing goes fucking great. And it's the right thing to do. If we all got killed doing it it'd still have been the right thing."

"Well then, who am I supposed to be killed by?"

Not doing this, God.

"Well? Why else wouldn't you tell me?"

"Sypha, he doesn't actually know the future!"

"Easy to say when you're not the one who's supposed to be dead in this future," Sypha replies.

"I never said that." He hadn't. He's really sure.

"But I am supposed to be dead, aren't I?" she insists.

"Why do you care?"

"Why do I -?! Why do you think?" Refusing to look at her doesn't really help when he can picture the anger on her face.

"The real Sypha wouldn't care if God thought she should've been dead, she wouldn't insist she's supposed to be."

"I'm not insisting!" she yells at him. "You're the one who won't explain things because you don't think any of this is real! I'm real to me, and I want to know whoever's going to kill me so I can do something about that!"

"Oh," he says.

"So tell me already!"

He looks up. "Nobody. Nobody did."

"Don't lie about this."

"I'm not," he says, and he's not, really. "The priests told the people to kill you all and they showed up but by then everyone but me was in the catacombs and I was better at killing than being killed and then you appeared with walls of fire and - well, they stabbed the priest to death instead, and unlike the priests we did something about the Night Horde, and no one said anything against Speakers after that. That's how it really went."

"So no one killed me."

"Yeah," he says. "No one."

It'd really been more of a team effort. Sypha and the prophecy and him.

Sypha looks so terribly relieved and he wishes that was the end of it but it's not, so he says, "But something's going to go wrong now."


	12. Wrong

"Something's going to go wrong," Alucard repeats, unimpressed. "Yes, you told me that when explaining people were certainly killing Sypha. I suppose the same is why I already died hours ago from the deadly experience of looking around."

"I don't know what's going to go wrong, that's the whole problem!" Maybe it has to be something he didn't see coming. That would make sense, wouldn't it? It always goes wrong as soon as he's not expecting it.

"Why, though?" Sypha asks.

"Because it just is!" he shouts.

"And it's something particular to Gresit? It won't be a problem elsewhere?"

Huh. He hadn't been thinking about that. God couldn't make some bastard stab them in the back if there weren't any humans around in the first place. Demons could still show up and kill them, but that wasn't nearly as bad. Monsters were supposed to kill you. And you don't have to ask all sorts of messy questions, like, are they trying to kill me because they think I'm the monster and if I kill them for trying to kill a monster what would that make me?

But if Trevor can so easily say that it's no contest which way he'd prefer, then maybe it's not bad enough to happen at all. But if he says that, says they won't run into trouble, if it does happen and they die because they weren't expecting it then it's his fault - but if he says demons will show up, it pretty much can't happen, right? Because he'd have done everything he could do at that point and if that's not enough it's just not enough, he can't be blamed for what he can't do anything about. So he just has to say that demons could show up and then they actually might be safe between Gresit and Dracula. And it's still a better death if they're not.

"He's just saying anything to get you to agree to leave," Alucard replies. "Even if he thinks he knows, it's not true."

It seems like it's true. Is Trevor wrong? He'd definitely rather get killed by demons, it's not even a question. Trevor tries imagining them all getting torn into chunks by demons. For a moment he thinks yeah, that's bad, sure, but not too terrible. But it doesn't have to be unending demons like he was expecting yesterday, it can be just enough, it can be _them_ without including _him_ and -

Alright, God. It's not true. Point very much taken. But if they'll be fucked regardless of where they are that's not the same as an actual reason to stick around. And they've got to leave at some point to deal with Dracula.

He may not be clear on much but killing Dracula, he got that part right.

Sypha asks, "You don't find it odd he knew you were going to fix the courtyard? Or could?"

"That particular area was already held together by magic and I plan to return here. It's easy to guess I'd restore it. You fell, correct? And he fell through the other area, and perhaps that's why he won't stop insisting it was also made by magic and by me despite it being centuries old."

"So it's Dracula but also it's not magic now?" Trevor demands.

"Yes. Because it was...how did you put it, 'some sadistic vampire joke'. The uppermost area was mundane so as to not give away that joke early. That's why there were no proper lights up there. The lower area is a surprise. If, seeing where they've ended up, they assume the dangers mean there's some equal reward and press forward instead of fleeing, they die pointlessly. I was surprised to see so many statues. When it was explained to me, it didn't sound like something people would fall for," Alucard continues blithely.

Alright, God, he knows, Sypha did stupid stupid things. She'd sounded sure but he met her telling him with utter confidence that since he'd saved her she had to go deeper into a deathtrap, she just always sounded sure.

He should've known better. It's his fault. He gets it, he gets it, he already got it, what's the point of rubbing his nose in things he can't do anything about?

"So there's nothing much beyond there?" Sypha asks.

"Just another room, for anyone who survived and insisted on continuing."

"There's still some horrible monster down there?"

"Quite a lot now, I think, but nothing to be concerned about. They hate having their tethers moved so they're quite upset - they've iced up the hallway beyond, even -"

Oh shit. Those.

"- but it's perfectly safe so long as no one enters." Alucard continues like the idiot he is.

God, don't tell him he's supposed to deal with that? He could handle one with just the whip, maybe even a couple, but not however many _quite a lot_ must be. And apparently they're angry? How can you make something that's always raging angry? What would that even be? He needs, ugh, if you don't have desert sand to disrupt the connection you can heat regular sand yourself but it's got to be by the sun and good fucking luck this time of year…

Sypha, perhaps finally catching on to just how obviously a trap the entire place had been but not, thankfully, that 'tether' is a fancy way to say 'their fucking skulls' because he really can't take the possibility of her rushing back down there, asks, "Is the hallway sloped so anyone who goes there slips in?"

"No, the area wasn't designed with them in mind. It was actually supposed to be empty. Like I said, a joke. You'd likely have difficulty getting back up the stairs now," Alucard admits, "but the ice extends well above there. And that's humming with how much they don't want to be approached. Without a prophecy motivating someone to push through anyway, I can't see it being any problem."

Yes, how could murderous ice ghosts under a major city be a problem. A major city that's been hollowed out, no less!

So Actual Gresit is actually fucked. Well. He did tell them they should abandon the place because the underground was full of magic shit instead of ground. The fact he didn't investigate enough to find out that in addition, what's not giant gears is doubly furious monsters probably won't matter.

"Well," Sypha says, "I suppose with the entrance closed… If you can put the courtyard back, could you also wall off the hallway entirely?"

"If you think that's necessary," Alucard replies, clearly still thinking it's no such thing.

"I do."

There's a moment of expectant silence, then Sypha says, "Well, let's get going then."

"Now?" Alucard asks.

"Why not now?"

"I intended to wait for night."

Trevor thinks back on Alucard sitting through his tirade regarding staying the fuck put or else without expression. Even if mostly Alucard sat around because it turned out that was just what Alucard did with his time, he'd thought his frankly inventive threats had at least convinced him to stay put that one time until Trevor was too asleep to act on any of them. _Motherfucker._

"Would it help if I got you a cloak?" Sypha suggests. No way. He can pull his fancy dead salamander jacket over his head if it's such a big deal.

"How would that help?" Alucard demands, as if she suggested he light himself on fire directly.

Sypha glances at the walls, asks, "Is cloth not thick enough?"

Alucard pauses, then glares at Trevor. "Belmont is delusional and a poor source of information. Sunlight does not hurt me."

"But you don't like it."

Alucard's voice is like a rope about to snap. "Humans see best in daylight. It is most obvious what I am then. And that is most problematic in populated areas, _like a city_."

Trevor laughs, which gets him more glaring but now from Sypha as well. "What? A vampire could take this place apart."

"You have so precisely identified and addressed my concern," Alucard tells him coldly. "Why didn't killing all of them occur to me."

"So explain who's going to win the fight. And if that's not enough, just don't actually crack open their skulls when you hit them. Eventually they'll realize getting punched again isn't worth punching you again. Works for me." This does not seem to convince Alucard despite it being entirely true, if anything more true given Alucard can't even die from being punched, so he tries, "Look just. Aren't you guys good at avoiding notice?"

"By not walking around a city at noon!"

Alucard sounds...angry? Upset? Trevor's going to go with angry, he decides. Which is completely unreasonable because: "You declared yourself the city's slumbering messiah!"

"You did that!" Alucard shouts at him.

"But you did it first!"

"Two people is not a city!"

"But you were going -" Trevor starts, but no, Alucard hadn't actually done much of anything but tag along. On the other hand, "You had a speech ready," he points out.

"Is your actual goal to incite a mob?" Alucard demands. "Are you willing to risk that - no, of course, you said you were sure I wouldn't kill humans. It's not even a risk in your deluded mind. Force me to flee Gresit. Have you thought this any further? I don't need to be within the city walls to see the castle arrive and I can't be trapped by the daylight, so even if anyone could be mustered, which I truly doubt, I don't need to fear pursuit."

Why are vampires so dramatic about every fucking little thing. Okay, yes, he did tell them Alucard's a vampire, and probably halfbreeds usually skate through knowing no one would even consider that, but, "There's no mob! They believe my whole family does black magic, I'm pretty sure they still think Sypha's a witch and just aren't saying it because I threatened she'd leave if they did, and all they cared when I said you're vampire was if that meant I was lying about not being a monster too!"

"I would not put it like that," Sypha interjects, "but... Demons killed half of Gresit, and they know more will come for the rest of them. Even if you weren't claiming to be here to stop Dracula this is simply not the time for anyone to pick a fight. If that is some puppetmaster's plan, they have badly misjudged the situation."

"And tomorrow?" Alucard asks coldly. "If no more demons arrive?"

"People aren't actually that terrible," Trevor says.

"You were insisting so long a single person remained within the city's walls, they'd kill Sypha."

"I didn't mean it as an indictment of people. People are..." Trevor does not actually have any idea how to finish that sentence. He looks to Sypha, who's supposed to be in charge of not-hating-people. Optimism, that one. She looks back with a coolness that adds up to 'why yes I'd like to hear what you were thinking too' so looks like Trevor's fielding everything today. "It takes longer, alright? Took days and days just to work everyone up to agree to kill the Speakers." Far less time to decide to kill that priest, but... Sypha barely visible against a darkened sky. Knowing the Night Horde would be there so soon. All that time being convinced that killing someone was the solution, ready to do it and already armed, and he'd been out of reach behind the flames. And...the sort of stuff the guy had done, and if they didn't know the whole of it they knew enough to see the shape. "And it goes both ways! By the time they notice that the demons aren't around killing them, they'll know you haven't killed anyone either. Just do your normal not-a-vampire vampirey pontificating at them like you would when people don't know you're a vampire and stop worrying about the time of day."

"The things you don't know are even more baffling than the things you do," Alucard says after a moment. "I wonder..." and then he lunges forward and grabs Trevor by the hair.

And yet, it's _Trevor_ everyone says is rude. Fucking vampires.

Alucard stares into his eyes for several seconds, though what he's looking for, Trevor has no idea. The idea eyes are windows into anything is a load of horseshit. They're just balls of goop. One of the easiest bits for shapeshifters to get right, even.

And indeed, Alucard just makes a frustrated noise and lets go of him again. "I can't tell if he has a concussion through the alcohol withdrawal." Then he shakes his hand and continues, "Your hair is _disgusting_."

"You're wearing gloves, you didn't even touch me."

"And yet," Alucard says curtly, like that's a response, followed by, "I realize you lack anything resembling a sense of self-preservation -"

"Did better than most," Trevor reminds the ceiling. Maybe only average for his family in terms of years, but Belmonts put more stock in number of kills before you inevitably got killed. More fair.

" - but you could at least keep your own wounds clean."

"So you did do something!" Sypha accuses Alucard immediately.

"He didn't," Trevor says quickly, only for Alucard to interrupt with, "Yesterday." See, this is why families are supposed to have more than one child, only children grow up into idiot adults who don't know how to shut their stupid faces. How much of a nightmare must he have been that even fucking Dracula decided nope, can't handle another one of these?

Well, if he was still doing creepy baby talk at twenty-something like that other one... Christ in Heaven, that thing was awful. No wonder they're so rare.

"It's nothing," Trevor tries to tell Sypha. "I told you the fight went just as bad both times. Got punched, hit the unnecessary sharp decorative stairs, the end no big deal."

"Oh? And what did you tell your real Sypha to convince her of this?" There's nothing Trevor can do about her being mad about that part and that's very much like it not being his problem in the first place.

"_Someone_ didn't tattle on me," Trevor retorts. Sypha makes a face and Trevor covers the back of his head. "It scabbed over already!" There had in fact been a lot of blood involved, which to Trevor is all the more reason to not get it wet but if he says that he just knows she's going to somehow think it means the very opposite.

Sypha inhales.

"No," he tells her. "It doesn't get infected left alone!"

"You were willing to stick your arm in a bucket," she says.

"No."

"So you can't claim you're actually afraid of water," she continues.

"No," he insists, and crosses his arms. "You can't make me."


	13. Water

"Wait," Trevor says. "So that place was actually Dracula's."

"As I keep saying."

"But you did the - ow fucking - collapsing gear disaster, and your endless staircase keep."

From his spot by the fire, Alucard says peevishly, "It wouldn't have collapsed if you didn't touch it."

"Which supposedly someone told me." A drop of stinging water trickles down his neck and he swats at it. You'd think pointing out the soap was a bad batch would've at least gotten him out of that part. "Which means you're sure Dracula knew about that. Fuck! Sypha it doesn't even need stitches!"

"Oh? A cut across the entire back of your head doesn't need stitches?"

And fucking Alucard takes her side and says, "Is there any element of medical treatment you aren't opposed to?"

"I'm opposed to Sypha and the fact she doesn't know the difference between stitches and trepanning!" He shouldn't even need to explain that, Alucard can damn well see the disaster Sypha's inflicting on him. But then, why would he expect Alucard to think anything of it? A slow death by needlepoint is probably Dracula-approved.

Sypha stabs him in the skull with the needle again. "You complain a lot for someone who said nothing about an injury in the first place."

She was a fucking hypocrite. He'd said she needed stitches and she'd insisted cauterizing amounted to the same thing, and at least Trevor actually could stitch a wound. And it's on his head! There's nothing even there to get fucked up by scar tissue.

"_Does_ he have any holes drilled in his skull?" Alucard asks, like this is an actual possibility, and Sypha, like this is an actual possibility, lays off on stabbing him to prod the top of his head.

"Of course I don't!" Trevor objects, which accomplishes precisely as much as the rest of his objections. "Supposedly Dracula knew about the gears and future sinkhole place," Trevor says, giving up on trying to bat Sypha's poking hand away and returning to the subject. "But if you're not lying, why did you pick this as the best place to hide out from him? Figure was so obvious he'd never think to look? He wouldn't think his own son was so stupid?"

"I didn't build it expecting I'd need to hide from my father after he almost killed me," Alucard says.

Does every fucking thing have to be a pit trap with Alucard?

And then, _not like he fucking asked to hear more but since when does that matter_, Alucard continues, "It wasn't done, actually. I wanted to do it on my own and then I would show him."

Sypha was right, he's not even an icy well he's a goddamn winter lake that hasn't figured out how to freeze over properly! Why can't he just not answer questions like a normal person? Not think about it like a normal person?

The solution is probably to stop stomping around on the ice but if Trevor does that then he'll have to think about things and what's outside of his own head, be it Alucard and his stupid stupid feelings or Sypha and her insistence you can stitch up a wound like a ripped seam, continues to be an improvement.

He kicks Sypha's foot, hoping she understands that this is absolutely her problem too now and if she doesn't talk he's going to keep doing it himself.

"And you did it by magic?" Sypha asks, pulling her conversational weight.

"Most of it did not use magic," Alucard says.

"But you used magic," Sypha says.

Alucard makes a futile effort to move talk to force distribution and arches and whatever the fuck tensile strength means and Sypha persists in trying to find out how you could magic way too many stairs into existence and in the process turn a populated city into a sinkhole, seriously you'd think the one thing vampires would be good at is planning long-term but no, and, in sum: Alucard used magic any time he fucked something up, which he is strongly working to imply was almost never and probably actually was every other foot of the place.

Trevor says that followed by, "Can't believe you didn't drain the whole city before you finished." He throws another apple at Alucard, who catches it.

Alucard places the apple neatly in the growing pile by his side. "Despite your belief the world revolves around you, blood is blood. There's little distinction between yours and that of any other animal." Yeah, Trevor's not buying that. If there really was nothing special about human blood, vampires would stop tearing into people and stick to just animals once they realized a hunter was on their tail. Vampires are monsters, not idiots. Also, as the unbitten apple pile shows, liars.

"Wait," Sypha says, and great, she sounds excited, can't Alucard's aura of boredom ever work for Trevor's benefit? "Do you mean you sacrificed a goat each time? That actually works?"

"I would not recommend goats," Alucard says, so, yes.

"What animal do you recommend to fix your courtyard fuckup?" Trevor asks. "Horse? Ox? Several oxen?"

"I will not need any barnyard animals," Alucard informs him.

"Because you already ate several oxen earlier."

"It would not take an ox's worth of blood." So again, yes. "And it may be that the original spell remains on the area and simply needs to be repaired after you broke it."

"It's your fault there was anything to break."

"Yes," Alucard says with the same placid acceptance as before, making Trevor's skin crawl. It's like one of those fairy tales where you make a completely reasonable wish and then you get fucked over by it for no reason. He continues, "I was overly enthusiastic. I wanted a large space to work with and did not pay enough attention to ensuring the ceiling was supported. There were other ways of dealing with that, but the solution of reinforcing a single layer of stones was the limit of what I could do myself."

"Ah, so if it had been Dracula it would've been different," Sypha says.

Alucard really needs more practice not being deafeningly guilty when he's silent.

"You were working with Dracula," Trevor realizes. "_He_ picked that spell because _you're_ so bad at magic it was the only one you could do. This is what vampires think is fun, bonding over ridiculous architecture. That and killing people. I guess this is also a way of killing people, just slowly and through incompetence instead. And -" On second thought no, repeating that Alucard had to have reached fresh heights of idiocy to think Dracula wouldn't know exactly where he is will just lead to Alucard repeating his whining about how could he possibly have known in advance that Dracula, who even Alucard admitted was evil, was actually evil. "Then why are you so defensive about how you made it by magic? You live in a magic castle held together by magic and more magic and also a bunch of magic. Sypha," he continues because he wants someone to commiserate with and God knows Alucard isn't suddenly going to manifest common sense, "so I say castle but you need to understand, Dracula's castle_ isn't actually a castle_. At all. There's just no word for whatever it really is, because no one should ever need one. It shouldn't exist. Kind of like vampires in general, but even more. It's what would happen if someone looked at a castle and said, 'What if I built something in all the spaces a castle wasn't, ignoring each and every reason why castles are supposed to be castle-shaped, because I'm a vampire and that means I'm fucking nuts.' It's like some sort of giant rock tree with spikes and windows, except trees at least have roots to keep them upright and that's too reasonable so Dracula said fuck that. It's like some dumbass cut down a tree and then tried to set it upright again and then set up shop inside, and also it's the size of a dozen castles. Because that's the kind of thing vampires think is a great idea."

Alucard says, like the complete liar he is, "Many parts of the castle aren't magic."

"Is that what Daddy told you? Yeah son, it's completely normal and non-magic to have entire mini-castles floating in midair only connected to the rest of the building by hundreds of feet of narrow catwalk."

"You are remarkably irritated at somewhere you've never been."

"Have so. Place is a God-forsaken maze. I should've realized all vampires can float because anyone who had to actually walk it would never have kept building like that." Alucard doesn't respond. "Wait. I can prove I have," Trevor realizes. "You said, you said Dracula was in one of his many fuckoff to everybody moods. Empty castle. Which actually explains a lot about why we kept losing track of him. Now your mom shows up and bangs her way in but that sure didn't convince him to go invite a bunch of other vampires over to visit because vampires are awful. There's vampires there now -"

"Really," Alucard interrupts.

"War on humanity, remember? Gets a guy out of his shell. But as I'm saying, nobody before that was hanging out there. But I," Trevor says triumphantly, "know that you can't draw for shit."

"I don't follow."

"Your colored wax scribbles."

Trevor is pretty sure this flavor of blank nothing is Alucard's 'realizing Trevor's completely right' expression.

Trevor smirks. "Did you always wreck any dirt doodles you made during the trip so no one learned just how badly it was humanly, or vampirely, possible to draw? Yeah. But did you completely forget to burn the ones in your room? Also yeah."

Alucard keeps staring at him. Then finally he says, "Well. I can at least be assured I'll ultimately know who's behind you. It's whichever vampire shouts about crayon drawings when they see me."

"There is no one behind me! I just told you something I'd have to actually have seen!"

"Wait," Sypha interrupts. "Is that what you went back to the castle about? Is that what you thought I'd disapprove of? Because I absolutely do."

"I just happened over them. I was trying to figure something else out."

"You just happened over sneaking into his room to paw through his things."

"Sypha, he's never been to, or even near, the castle."

"How else would I know about the fact you draw with all the skill of a drunken mule?"

"Well," Alucard says with even more irritation than Trevor expected, "apparently there are now other vampires there. And that is plausible enough. Better to have them inside the castle than realizing what he's planning for outside it. And evidently he does not care what else they get up to."

"The rest of them aren't in on the plan?" Sypha asks. "I wouldn't have thought vampires would object."

"To killing, no, but killing everyone is decidedly not in their interest. Actually eliminating humans would starve them. I suppose... He has things prepared he could show them. He's drawn up plans and inventions before this, speculation on how vampires could come to dominate humanity."

"Turning clouds black and flying machines to blot out the sun and all that," Trevor supplies.

"So he's indeed shared that with them."

"Don't know what he told them," Trevor says. "I heard it from you. You went on about it for a while. Very dramatic, utterly pointless given nobody else needs more reasons to kill Dracula. Looking back, I think you were compensating for how you failed to work out that a guy who writes up his genocide plans in books he binds with the skin of his enemies was evil. Is that your thing? Like calling me a runt because you're short?" Trevor briefly considers if this might apply to more but viewing other things Alucard said in this light is actually a lot sadder than funny and he discards it. And it makes sense that the rest, after he had time to get to know Trevor, was just what he actually thought.

Sypha says, "Alucard's as tall as you."

"But Dracula - " Trevor waves his hand well above Alucard's head. "Stupidly, unnecessarily tall. So when you look at it that way, Alucard is actually a teeny tiny puny little runt."

Alucard crosses his arms. "I might not be finished growing," he says in the pettiest voice.

Trevor laughs at this, which intensifies Alucard's hilarious little sulk. He's willing to believe it, it'd make more sense than that a halfbreed managed to be fully grown within a century. He's not, however, willing to give up insulting Alucard. "I bet you stunted your growth. Probably why your hair's still baby-yellow too. Bleeding all over every misaligned step can't be healthy. At a certain point you should've just accepted you're just so shit at stonework not even magic can make up for it."

"We've established I didn't build the older structure."

"But now you've _admitted_ you fucked up on both of the ones you did!" Trevor says gleefully.

"It was meant to-" Alucard starts, like if he just keeps saying that Trevor will eventually be stupid enough to believe him.

"Excuse me," says Sypha, "can we put aside your intense hatred for architecture and get back to vampires taking over the world?"

"They won't. None of it's actually feasible," Alucard says. "Not even if he could collect the resources to implement it. But they likely wouldn't know that. Things like the mechanics underlying natural plants are rather unimportant to vampires."

"What do plants have to do with anything?" she asks.

"Unimportant to everyone," Alucard corrects himself. "I don't know why I thought my parents meant vampires in particular didn't know, I just assumed I suppose. Since you farm. Somehow. How can you not know how your food works? Never mind. What I was trying to say was, it would kill everything."

"That doesn't really help us."

"No," Alucard agrees. "And it means there will be additional people in our way."

"We manage fine, don't worry. It actually works out kind of good," Trevor says. "After all, the only thing better than killing Dracula is killing Dracula and a lot of other vampires at the same time." And Alucard had damn well better not get pissy about that, vampires trying to kill you are by definition evil and perfectly okay to kill. "Also there's in-fighting or something where a lot of vampires kill each other, and that's always good. I don't know exactly who was on what side because they all stopped fighting to try to kill us when we burst in. My point is: lots of vampires is fine because it means killing lots of vampires."

"We're supposedly to walk in on a fight," Alucard repeats wearily. "Well. That's specific."

"Apparently there were a few hundred vampires in Braila."

"There are definitely not," he says in the same tired tone.

"Well there were, or are, at some point."

Alucard sighs. "Why would you even claim that?" he says. "If it's simply to lead me somewhere the castle isn't, there are so many plausible options." He looks at Sypha. "You're certain there aren't any gaps in his skull? Or loose bits?"

Sypha nods. "Why can you be so sure Braila's safe?"

"Not _safe_. But it's a port," he says with such distaste.

"Oh! And vampires can't cross running water!"

"Running water doesn't do anything!" Trevor shouts.

"Running isn't the issue, it's depth," Alucard claims. "Vampires sink."

"Vampires can't drown," Trevor retorts.

Sypha asks, "Vampires can't swim?"

"Can you swim in air?" Alucard says.

"No, but... Do you really weigh that much more than humans do?"

Alucard shakes his head. "It's...you know how boats work?"

"They're made of wood so they float," Sypha says.

Alucard's expression is pained. "No."

"I'm real sure wood floats," Trevor says. "Maybe you're the one with holes in your head."

"Rocks, then."

"That's what's in your head."

Alucard ignores Trevor to say to Sypha, "If you put a rock in a bowl of water, the water level rises. You know this," he says, sounding a bit desperate. "It's observable. The volume - the size of the rock means the same size of water has to move aside and it rises in proportion."

"Well, yes," Sypha says. "Eureka."

Trevor is pretty sure you can keep people from reaching water by throwing enough rocks in a well but he's not going to get anywhere saying that if they're both insisting otherwise.

Alucard continues a bit more confidently, "Wood doesn't float atop the surface of the water. It sinks partly, up to the point the weight of it reaches equilibrium with the weight of water it pushes aside. Humans can swim in large part because the push of the water's weight is close to equilibrium with their own weight, so when they're mostly submerged they need only make up a small difference to keep their head raised."

"Is this going somewhere," Trevor demands. "Because if you're a bunch of heavy rocks pretending to be a person you could've just said yes when Sypha asked if that was the problem."

"It's not about my weight," says the person who would not stop saying 'weight'. "I'm trying to explain how water works, because for some reason you don't know. In this case, the exception is that water does not provide the countering push. I could weigh less than air but would still sink in water."

"That's strange to picture," Sypha says, then her eyes widen. "It_ is_ because you're like rock!"

"See, I'm right, she said so!"

"You're not and I didn't," Sypha tells Trevor. "I meant elementally. Water is easy to manipulate by magic because it's so mutable. Too mutable, really, it has to be ice to make it still enough to really use. Vampires are very good at staying the same, at stasis, and water isn't that at all. So it's not that moving water hurts vampires, it's that all water is in some way moving and vampires don't want to be moved, or can't let themselves be."

"What? No. Vampires can change all over the place. He turns into a dog."

"I don't turn into a dog."

"Fine, you turn into a stuck-up dog."

"I do not."

Sypha ignores Trevor and concludes, "So then, it's impossible for Braila and similar places to have vampires."

It is absolutely not. And Alucard apparently feels bad about outright lying to Sypha, because he says, "Well..." and then, "Vampires _could_, certainly, but they wouldn't, not unless they had to. My father has clearly managed to raise his demon army. If the numbers aren't yet sufficient, or if the other vampires are bored, they'd take active part in razing cities, but they'd choose ones on solid ground unless they were utter idiots."

"Vampires can't actually die from drowning!" Trevor shouts again.

"That isn't as much of a benefit as you think!"

"So you're a cowardly little child and other vampires aren't and there was a fuckton at Braila! Or going to be!"

"Why! Why would two different groups of vampires both choose the worst location!"

"If they were trying to hide," Sypha says. "That's how humans would do it. You don't believe anyone would be there. You wouldn't think to check and you wouldn't _want_ to check either, would you? And that would explain why the castle would be there. Dracula has no need to personally go to any ordinary city when he already has the Night Hordes, but if Trevor and I can fight off demons, I imagine 'a few hundred' vampires would have no difficulty defending themselves. And...can vampires travel on boats, or do you sink them?"

After a distinct pause, Alucard admits, "Vampires are capable of traveling by boat. If they're reckless idiots."

"So. There you have it. A number of vampires attempt to amass without Dracula's knowledge, perhaps even traveling in through the port. He discovers they're there and goes to Braila to meet them."

Alucard considers. "You've done a good job of justifying the Belmont's claim," he says. "But if the only reason we would know this is because we went there in the future, how did we come to go there in the first place?"

"We didn't," Trevor says.

"You said," Alucard tells him, eyes narrow, "that when we enter, the two groups form a truce to attack us."

"In the middle of the fight, Sypha teleports the castle from Braila. Completely breaks it in the process."

"That doesn't sound like me," Sypha says. "I don't break things." Trevor rolls his eyes. "Also, I can't teleport a castle."

"How do you know anything about where the castle came from, or how many were in Braila, if the castle is moved?"

"We investigated afterward, because some of us give a shit. Turned out it was Carmilla's forces - thanks a fucking lot for not just telling us because 'it doesn't matter now', do you just like being wrong about everything - but she wasn't there herself, some others were in charge I think. I don't know whatever the plan was exactly because, you know, we killed all the vampires there and the people at Braila were just full of nonsense like that the vampires in the city dissolved in the rain so they were about as helpful as you." Trevor shrugs. "I killed Carmilla later. Turns out she thought with Dracula gone but everything else wrecked it was a good time to actually give vampire rule a go. Unless she was also going to kill absolutely everybody but did a better job of acting, who fucking knows with vampires."

"Carmilla," Alucard repeats, sounding disgusted.

He nods.

"Of all the petty - " Alucard starts. "Someone's doing all of this because she wouldn't fuck him?"

"What?"

"You're saying before this can end we'll have to deal with Carmilla as well," Alucard says.

"Wasn't really a we -" Trevor starts, but Alucard just continues with, "Carmilla! She doesn't get involved in anything! Am I thought to be simply rabid?"

And huh, guess he should've guessed Alucard would be touchy about Carmilla. Killing people you know must be weird. "Sorry," Trevor says. "But she does. I guess she seemed more reasonable when you met her."

"I've never met her," Alucard says, and when Trevor scoffs, says, "That's my point. No one reasonable has any opinion about her. Her name only comes up when someone's complaining they didn't get anything they wanted out of her."

"Wouldn't you have to meet her if you went up there?" Trevor asks. "Isn't that how it works with vampires?"

"Why would I go up there?"

"I thought, I mean you're not exactly related but still, isn't it kind of like your cousin? Niece?" Okay, it was pretty awful, but if there were basically no other humans in existence Trevor wouldn't take decades to meet one.

Maybe it's not the same thing? Maybe as far as Alucard's concerned they really are all just vampires, so there's nothing special about another halfbreed and he'd rather be fucking around under Gresit.

"Enough. I'm not debating a madman. There is not a vampire force in Braila, the castle will not be appearing there, we are not going there."

"I know we're not!" Trevor snaps. Which sucks, frankly, because apparently it'd make Alucard completely miserable and God, come on, Alucard deserves at least that.

"So we all agree!" Sypha interjects. "We are not leaving for Braila, and instead we are leaving now to go do something about the impossibly deep hole in the courtyard and very angry monsters."

Alucard tries shaking his head. He actually edges backward and he is really lucky his clothing doesn't light on fire because he's gone from being by the hearth to in it. Maybe the real reason he's wearing dead fireproof salamander is just because he's an idiot.

"Right, Belmont?" Sypha asks.

Oh. Shoe's on the other foot, fucker. Alucard has to go anywhere Trevor goes because he still thinks Trevor is part of a secret vampire conspiracy. "Yes! Absolutely!" He jumps up and darts for the door. "No sense wasting daylight! So many crows and magic owls waiting!"

"But there's -"

And right the reason they need to fix stuff is because there's still people living in Gresit. So, so many. Right outside.

On the one hand, he does kind of hate basically everyone in this place, what with all the attempted murder and just in general. On the other, apparently Alucard hates them more and fuck him, so: "We're off to fix the broken courtyard with vampire blood magic!" he shouts.


	14. Animals

Alucard spends most of the trip frantically whispering objections in Sypha's ear. That leaves Trevor fielding the questions.

What's vampire blood magic?

"No idea! I don't know magic."

Is this dangerous?

"Not for any of us at least!"

Are they summoning demons to do the work?

"If there is ever a plan that involves summoning demons, which there will never be, I would tell you up front so stop asking. And he can't, so you're not going to get anywhere begging him behind my back."

This is black magic, right?

"It's vampire blood magic," Trevor reminds them. "Cast by Dracula's fucking son. Yeah, pretty sure it's black magic."

Can you shut up?

"Sypha, we both know you have to put up with me if you want to drag Alucard out to show you how to turn dead animals into regrettable masonry. Can I? Yes. Will I, no. Anyway," he says to the previous person, "don't get your hopes too high, he's probably found a way to make black magic boring."

Zero people have tried to stab him even though there are so many more people than zero following them. Black magic black magic black magic nobody actually cares, years of his life thinking people believed a lie and it didn't even fucking matter. He feels somewhat giddy, only there's no lightness to it, more like he's the ocean stuffed into a barrel swirling around with no way out.

And there is no way out and that is not a line of thought he wants to pursue so instead Trevor continues, "Whatever he'll do, it's definitely not loud or bright or anything else that'd alert someone if it happened at midnight. I guess it makes sense black magic is pretty stealthy. I mean, it'd have to be for anyone use it without everyone else realizing what's up."

Alucard's whispering gets even more distressed, followed by Sypha muttering, "Well, this should establish if he's right about people not killing us all."

"Just worry about yourself, they can't kill him anyway," Trevor points out much more quietly. "It's really hard to kill a vampire and they have no clue what they're doing." Although that does remind him... "Oh right. Alucard, there was holy water dumped all over the place, sorry I almost forgot." See, that's why you tell people your stupid plans, so they can tell you if there's a problem with it instead of it igniting in your face.

"Thank you for telling me?" Alucard says.

"It's from yesterday night, right before we fell down." Alucard is just staring at him, looking baffled. "I'm telling you because I figured you'd know how long it lasts better than me."

"Why would I know?"

"Why the fuck wouldn't you know?" Trevor demands. "What do you do with your time?!"

"Oh, right," Sypha says. "Yes, that's a problem. Can you float over it? Or is the remaining courtyard blocking your abilities now?"

Alucard looks irritated. "It is not an issue."

Trevor rolls his eyes. "Yeah, durable, I know it doesn't kill you guys, but half of incineration is still going to smart."

"But you complained at length that I did this. So you must…" Alucard pauses. "I appreciate your concern," he says. "I will give it due consideration but it should not prevent me from resolving this problem."

And there are no flames. However, Alucard spends only seconds standing on the actual ground in favor of flinging himself right off the stones and into the empty pit, which sure seems like something somebody might do, if they were trying to pretend they were too cool to care about their feet burning.

Sypha gives chase. She leans to peer underneath from the edge of the broken stones and Trevor's false and unnecessary heart freezes in his chest because she'll slip, or it'll crumble further, and how could that kill her she has magic she's why they survived the fall the first time but maybe maybe maybe…

No, Alucard would probably help too, he at least likes Sypha -

\- he does not. Where the fuck did that thought even come from, Trevor knows better by now, maybe he did crack open his skull sometime because he doesn't remember being so stupid. But Alucard needs Sypha alive up until Dracula's dead. So between the two of them…

...but there's still the holy water, probably still chewing away at whatever black magic this is and the stones breaking might dump a pocket on Alucard below and Sypha could hit her head on the way this time and…

"Sypha do you have to stand right there on the edge!" he yells at her.

She straightens up and shifts all of half an inch backward. "It seems very stable," she says, and then, because she's fucking Sypha, stomps on the ground.

_"You don't need to test that!"_

What happens if they both manage to die now? Trevor won't reach the castle without them, so he can't even get killed by Dracula, is that where this goes, he's just there alone while demons kill everyone, forever.

Which is such a selfish fucking thing to think, isn't it. Like what matters is how he feels about shit.

"Alucard, I can't see through rocks, do the spell up here," she calls.

There's no immediate answer. Eventually, Alucard's head pokes back up, just enough for eye contact. "Sypha, what exactly did you do?"

"I didn't do this!" she insists. "I told you, I don't break things. He did this."

"A demon did this," Trevor says. "It exploded."

"Belmont hit it and it exploded," Sypha elaborates.

"Because he hit it, or just generally?"

"It's a consecrated whip, of course because I hit it!"

Alucard huffs. "I don't know why either of those things would do anything to the spell here." He dips back out of sight.

"Why are you so bad at this," Trevor groans.

"Why am I expected to know what magic I don't use would do?"

Right! Sure! How unreasonable to think maybe a fucking vampire should have the slightest familiarity with how stuff that kills vampires works! Also: "It's not like it's complicated. Necromancy, consecration, kaboom. Your spell was probably similar enough it exploded too."

"It was not similar. I told you, necromancy is the province of humans. Also, these were rocks."

"I mean it's all black magic. Now get up here and bleed all over everything for the audience."

"That isn't how it works."

"No?" Huh. "Is the floating sword and turning into a dog the only interesting magic you know? _None_ of Sypha's magic is boring. Maybe she should be teaching you."

"I heard for this kind of thing, you draw the spell out in blood," Sypha says.

"I would only need to be spilling blood for something outside my capacity."

It belatedly occurs to Trevor that he should probably clarify, "Animal blood! Everyone, we're talking about animal blood here."

"Humans are a type of animal," Alucard claims, reappearing. "Your blood would do fine, Belmont."

"Haha a vampire _joke_." Trevor glares at Alucard, who does not look sorry at all, and then back to the spectators. "It's the basis of all their humor, just arbitrary blasphemy _they know isn't true_ just to rile people up."

And instead of _Thanks for your timely intervention, oh wise Belmont, what the fuck was I thinking _Alucard says, "It's a fact-" so alright, reasoning with Alucard is off the table, on to the mob of people who, okay, were going to kill people because they were told to but also did kill somebody because Trevor sorta told them to so it comes down to who talks last or maybe loudest. "Don't kill people," he tells the crowd as clearly and confidently as he can manage. "Killing people does not accomplish anything." Well, beyond the people being dead, which…look, God, he gets it's a commandment, but it's obviously one of the more heavily caveated ones. "Alucard can you just fucking do the black blood magic shit before people start tying virgins to altars or marrying donkeys because you said something stupid?"

"Why are...what donkeys?"

Sypha crouches down to hiss what sounds like a very abbreviated summary recapping the basic divinity of man. Alucard mutters something incredulous back. "No, _marrying_," Sypha corrects. "Not fucking. Men will fuck anything regardless."

"That is often not true," Trevor says. "And no, they're both equally wrong because man's made in God's image and everything else isn't."

"This is the only thing stopping you from marrying and raping livestock."

"Don't put words in my mouth, vampires don't have a high horse to get on about not fucking 'livestock', and screw you, you turn into a dog!"

Which, whoops, gets someone muttering about how wait so vampires are in fact also werewolves and someone else saying no werewolves have to be human and in addition to being very wrong Trevor does not want to find out what happens when the good people of Gresit decide that maybe actually Dracula's wife only wasn't a witch because she was busy being a werewolf.

"No, no," Trevor tells them. "Regular wolf, not a werewolf." He holds up a hand and wiggles his thumb. "Werewolves have five toed-feet. And they've got stubbier faces. His is just a magic thing. Vampires have so fucking much magic and that's how."

"Wolves aren't dogs," Alucard says.

"Wait, so you _do_ turn into a wolf?" Sypha asks.

"They're stuck up asshole dogs." This is just a fact Alucard has to live with. "God made dogs and then some of the dogs fucked off to the forest to make pacts with the devil, but they're still a kind of dog."

"You're blaming dogs on your god?" Alucard sounds, of all things, flabbergasted. "You're religious, I thought that involved liking God."

"You have something against dogs?" Trevor demands. "What the fuck is with you, dogs are great."

"They're really not," Sypha says.

"Obviously rabid dogs are awful, rabid anything's awful, you need to stop holding that against regular dogs. And it's not like vampires have to worry about other things biting them, they do the biting, it's their whole thing, so what else could he possibly hate dogs for? Well? Is it that they're not stuck-up enough?"

"I respect your opinion," Alucard tells him with the sort of solemn formality that is absolutely setting up some sort of punchline.

"No, you don't."

"I respect your opinion," he repeats firmly.

"You absolutely don't."

"Your terrible opinion. I respect your right to that, for whatever equally terrible reasons you have for it. Possibly the brain damage you're suffering from."

"Tell me your terrible non-reason for hating dogs so I can tell you you're wrong."

"No," Alucard says, and dips below the edge so he's out of sight again.

"You can't just - I know you're still there!" Trevor yells at him. "Answer the damn question!"

Alucard does not.

"You've very invested in dogs then," Sypha says.

"They're really not that bad," he tells her. Not that she's going to be convinced, why would saying the same thing to the same person add up to anything different, but Trevor's _right_. "The barking is because they don't want to bite, you're just very confrontational. Rabid dogs don't even bark, you know."

"I think I will also respect your right to that opinion."

"Sypha, no," he whines. "You do not. You think I'm stupid. You think when dogs don't bite someone it's a trick to eat them later. You threw a fireball at a sheepdog."

"I very much respect your right to that opinion."


	15. Magic

Alucard sulks underground for a period of time that's long enough to be annoying but not long enough Trevor isn't also annoyed by the implication that Trevor's an infant who forgets things exist if they get out of sight. _He is going to find out what the asshole has against dogs._

But he's going to wait until Alucard doesn't have a pit to hide in to say so because despite what Alucard evidently thinks, Trevor is perfectly smart and capable of long-term strategy.

"I have no idea how this happened," Alucard admits when he pokes his head out again. "I expected the blast's force to have knocked things loose but it's completely severed. At least what's left seems as solid as before -"

"So also crap," Trevor interrupts. "Now will you stop standing on the edge, Sypha?"

"It's just as hollow under where you're standing."

"Who cares?"

Then Alucard looks at Sypha and makes a thoughtful sound.

"Don't you dare," Trevor says immediately.

"Don't I dare what?" the smug bastard says.

"Do what you were going to do and not whatever new bad idea you had!"

"Sypha," Alucard says, "instead of showing you, would you like to try casting the spell?"

Sypha looks like she's considering, but that's only because Sypha is really good at pretending like she's still considering something she's definitely going to do.

And indeed, "Don't tell Sypha to do your blood magic!" is _fucking immediately_ undermined by Sypha asking, "Would a donkey be enough?"

Alucard sighs. Still floating in the pit, he rests his arms on the stone and either the holy got burned off the edges by the explosion or salamander skin insulates from the magic kind of fire too. "It would be completely unnecessary. I told you, humans are better at magic that alters the world around them. You should be able to cast the spell without issue."

"And if you're wrong and your blood magic spell eats too much of her blood and turns her into a shriveled corpse - " and fuck there is no if is there this is absolutely the sort of thing Hell would think was funny for her to be dead like that blood loss and bloodless aren't you fucking funny God -

Well fuck you, Alucard's stupidly deep and definitely fatal hole in the ground is still right there and Trevor's reasonably certain he can't get double-damned for jumping.

Maybe he should right now. Then he doesn't have to even see her die.

"Belmont!" Alucard shouts at him, sounding irritated. He stops by the edge. Right, Alucard's not going to want Trevor dead until Sypha's dead and he knows better about his stupid prophecy, but if Trevor stabs him he should let go... Or if Trevor cuts his hand right off when Alucard grabs him, since Trevor's still got the sword. Yeah, that's a better plan. More decisive. "Did you hear what I said?"

"No," Trevor says.

"I said," Alucard tells him, "there's no such thing as blood magic spells. Stop calling it that."

Wow, God. Called your fucking bluff, huh? It's no fun if Trevor figures it out in advance so now there's no such thing as blood magic at all?

"But that's how you were planning to fix this," Sypha objects, so the whole conversation still happened. Arg, this would be giving him a headache if he didn't already have one.

"It's not a type of spell." Alucard takes his hands off the stones to gesture and Trevor jolts, expecting him to fall now that he's let go but, vampire, floating, not an issue. "It's...when you throw charcoal onto a fire, does the fire care what kind of wood it started out as? It's fuel. And if, supposedly, you are to manage to teleport a castle - a castle that, as Belmont complained so vehemently, is far larger than an ordinary castle - pulling a few stones back into place should be no problem."

Sypha is nodding like this is reasonable, but says, "Aren't there spells that only work with sacrifices?"

"It's a matter of getting around individual limitations. Like I said about draining Belmont of blood to manage a larger fire."

"So the kinds of spells humans are bad at, we'd know those as black magic."

"I suppose?"

"I'm not saying Sypha can't do a spell I'm saying you'll probably get it wrong when you try to make up a human version," Trevor insists. "Because you're terrible at magic, Sypha you saw, he's garbage at it you said so. How's he supposed to work out how human magic should go? He won't and you'll die."

"I'm not going to die," Sypha says.

"There's no fucking prophecy!" he snarls at her.

And suddenly Alucard catches up to the obvious: "Is that why you're going along with him about this? I had thought - all this is precisely as bad an idea as it seems, isn't it? You're assuming it's safe because a madman said so."

"I just said the spell isn't safe!"

Sypha completely ignores this even as she says, "What would be the point of all that, of his stories, of the story of the sleeping soldier, if it all went nowhere?"

Alucard shakes his head. "No. That's...you can't rely on that."

"Oh, I think I can. You've figured out the same thing. You only need that there be a prophecy. _Information from the future requires there to be a future_. That there's someone -" And then she shuts up and stares at something and Trevor turns and aw fuck.

"Aw fuck," he says. "Remember how you were avoiding me? That was great. Don't ruin that."

To his credit, the surviving deacon sure looks like he doesn't want to be here either, and does not actually venture any closer than the front of the crowd. "Er," he says.

"I really don't like priests," Trevor elaborates. "And, I hate you. Maybe I wasn't clear about that. I don't punch lots of people I hate, it wasn't an invitation to chat."

"I...I have been told you're..." the man manages.

And however much of a screwup Trevor is, he is definitely a better person than any of Gresit's priests. "You know, you're ending up in Hell too. How's that feel?" Gratifyingly, it looks like it feels fucking terrifying. He turns back to Sypha and Alucard. "Don't even start," he tells them. "Sypha, the fact he didn't get a chance to try to kill your family this time doesn't change that he would've."

"Er," says Sypha.

Alucard makes a tiny sigh and then...mimes raising himself on his arms and getting a leg up to climb out of the hole like he isn't just floating, why are vampires like this. He walks just far enough that he's past Trevor. "I sincerely apologize for the commotion."

"Don't be polite at him! If you're going to have bullshit feelings then have them about this fucker! He could've made an actual choice!"

This gets a momentary startle out of Alucard, but then he turns back to the asshole. "I understand numerous things have been said but there is no need for you or anyone to be alarmed," Alucard says smoothly. It'd work better if he wasn't saying it through a curtain of hair, though. "Belmont is simply...very enthusiastic about things he does not himself understand properly. We are not actually doing any of the things he shouted earlier."

"You're not doing black magic?" the deacon asks.

A terribly awkward pause. "You're not in any danger," Alucard tries.

"I am responsible," the man starts, which, wow, people in Gresit just love being wrong, "for the souls of this community."

"It will not be taking anyone's souls, or involving them in any way. If Belmont came across as demanding their presence for this, I assure you that is simply another misunderstanding. It is fine...ideal, even...if you would all prefer to leave the area, in fact. There is no need for any of you to concern yourself with this."

"I am afraid I have to be concerned when Satanic magic is being done in this city."

"Oh!" Alucard says, as if this clears up everything. "_Satan_. No, I am not drawing power from Satan, or summoning Satan, or otherwise involving Satan," he continues, sounding very earnest and even more condescending. "I promise that nothing that happens will allow Satan to harm the people of this city, or give Satan any claim to their souls."

And there is the tiniest flicker of amusement on Sypha's face.

Wait…

Sypha had mentioned, in the process of elaborating on how in her people's opinion the problem was God Himself, that they did not actually believe in the existence of Satan, fallen angel, ruler of Hell, and so on.

Alucard has now gone on to telling everyone that not only is what he and Sypha is doing is safe but in general, he promises that Satan will not now or ever be harming them and they shouldn't be afraid about any of that. And even for someone who lies all the time, that really seems an excessive level of confidence.

And he and Sypha also agree on how prophecies are from the future and not the past, which is another thing he's never heard anyone else say.

Was Dracula a Speaker?

He siddles over to Sypha and whispers, "Do Speakers come from the Mediteranian? Originally."

"No," she says. "Much, much further."

Hm. "But some Speakers are there, right? About how long ago would that have been? Like, hundreds of years?"

"Why?"

"It's not something that should be said where anyone can hear," he tells her. "Really not."

"Like the fact I do magic."

"You're trying to make me say what it is but then if I say it, you'll know I was right about not saying it and then you'll be mad I said it anyway, and then something worse could happen because of saying it and it'll be my fault and you'll be even angrier at me."

"You are frustrating to talk with."

"I'm responsible," Trevor claims, and Sypha rolls her eyes. "I am. I am being responsible right now."

The deacon, looking disgustingly heartened by the fact he's managed to exchange words with Alucard without anything bad happening, and what is even the point of Alucard if he won't intimidate people, says, "Be that as it may, I do not think it is necessary for there to be any magic done to this city."

Trevor cackles, because just, there is something about this place and being amazingly, impressively, utterly wrong about everything. "You're standing on magic right now," Trevor tells the deacon and then waves about to make sure the rest of the crowd really gets that he doesn't just mean the one spot. "This whole city, it's literally built on top of evil vampire black magic! And horrible ice" - shit don't say ghost don't say ghost - "monsters."

Alucard opens his mouth and Trevor is terrified but what comes out is instead, "Acolytes of the void," because apparently vampires are too good to use normal names for anything else either and like to make up flowery nonsense, thank you God for that actually being useful for once. "But they are deep underground."

"You should definitely clear out of this place," Trevor says. "We all should!"

"There is no need for that, we are going to deal with the monsters!" Sypha shouts over him. "Immediately after this. We won't let them harm anyone."

"But first Alucard is going to stick your courtyard back together."

"But first I am going to stick your courtyard back together," Sypha says.

"Sypha, you will die. You will die horribly," he begs.

"It's not as if I can do a spell without knowing what it is," Sypha tells him. "I wouldn't cast something that was going to eat me in the process. And you said I'll move a whole castle!"

"Don't you believe she'll do that?" Alucard asks in the smuggest rhetorical manner.

"Not if she does your spell right now and dies!"

"Belmont. It's the same spell! The one you think already happened without incident. All it does is stick rocks together."

"But you're a vampire," Trevor points out.

"I believe that has been established," Alucard says.

"And magic works differently for humans than vampires."

"Yes. It is significantly _more difficult_ for me than a human. So we can be doubly assured that a spell I managed _as a child_ is not dangerous."

How fucking long has Alucard been haunting this shithole? And _why?_ Why not some other shithole?

Sypha snaps, "You keep saying you don't know anything about magic. Well, I do! I'm not going to kill myself by accident!"

"God, fine!" he snaps back. Fine! Either she's right and the hole fills in or he jumps in, God, you heard him the first time.

Alucard and Sypha begin muttering about magic. Trevor watches the crowd, who are also muttering about magic. Going by past events, the crowd is probably wrong and getting more wrong by the word, but whatever, magic is not Trevor's problem. If this annoys Alucard, haha fuck him. If this annoys Sypha, well, he's not exactly thrilled with her right now either. If the fact the general tone seems to be adding up to, "Well, holy water didn't do much, maybe we should hear out the devil's counter offer," well seriously fuck the deacon, and they're not actually saying it to Trevor personally, so he's mostly sure he's not obligated to go defend God's honor.

Better not be. Trevor doesn't have anything but that God is the bigger and scarier bastard.

"So like…" Sypha says.

There is a godawful grinding bang as a largely collapsed building tears itself the rest of the way apart, along with a number of screams from the crowd. A moment later the bricks have slapped into place over the hole, utterly silent as they slot in despite the speed they're moving at.

The dust settles.

"...Well, that's done," Alucard says.

But that's not right. Alucard didn't do that. Both because Trevor's reasonably sure he'd have noticed if anything was wrecked further and because what's there now is clearly a patch, visibly different in color and shape from the original.

Sypha...fucked up a spell?

No, that can't be it.

"Alucard, you fucked up the spell," Trevor decides.

"I'm_ fine_," Sypha says.

Alucard agrees, "Sypha's still not dead," and has the fucking gall to sound like it matters either way to him.

"Some of us have higher standards than not dropping dead," Trevor tells them. "It's supposed to look the same as before. Like the whole thing never happened." He had, in fact, had to field more than a few people doubting their own memories when faced with the sudden lack of evidence, which had really not helped his own quest to figure out if Alucard had ate a person or three to accomplish it.

"I didn't make a mistake. The spell didn't have anything to do with looks," Sypha says, terribly defensive. "It changes how the stone works, not its appearance."

"Yeah, obviously Alucard did."

Alucard regards him, then says, "Yes."

"Arg! Stop doing that!" Trevor orders.

"Fine," Alucard says. "No then."

Sypha considers the stonework before her. "If we were to make it match, how would that be done? A second spell?"

"By using the original material. I suppose I might have done that, but -" He gestures toward the crowd and huffs. "If they haven't figured it out already, Belmont will keep talking until they do." He spares a quick glare at Trevor and adds, "I suppose he's successfully convinced me I won't be returning here."

Trevor almost tells him that he should probably make sure all his weird maze traps are off and staying off in that case, but, well, Trevor's pretty sure this whole mess isn't going to keep going that long.

Also, really, "Nobody should be here. Really. Ever."

"I've heard the other cities are in no better shape," Sypha says quietly.

"It's a disaster all over, sure. But we'll do something about that, and then people can rebuild. Specifically, these people could go somewhere else and help rebuild there." He pauses and considers the crowd. "Will you all leave if I point out that your church is absolutely fucked and not a church? It stopped being one at some point, or, I don't know, maybe it never was?" Trevor shrugs, glances at the deacon. "I'd say you'd know how this all actually works but the rest of you lot clearly didn't. But a place that's supposed to be God's house no longer having any holy power to it is probably what happens before Satan does come to eat everyone's souls, so worry about that instead." They ought to be worried. If any of this were real, and also if Trevor wanted anything to do with churches, he'd have been pretty worried. "Can things that look like churches secretly be for Satan instead? Alucard, you'd know if it was all the way flipped to radiating unholy power, right?" Or maybe Alucard can't tell unholiness any more than Trevor can tell when water is holy, but in that case it should've been doing things to regular people.

"No one will be eaten by Satan," Alucard cuts in. "Belmont, calm down. I understand you suffer from anxiety, and I am sorry, but nothing is going to go wrong."

"Well, now this place is definitely fucked."

Sypha sighs. "Belmont, to your knowledge, does anything actually happen to the people here?"

"That's not the point."

"To your knowledge, does the sky fall, does Satan emerge from the ground, does anything at all actually go wrong?"

"We were just here four days." Which was five too long, but who listens to him.

"And after that, do you hear about Gresit crumbling into the ground killing everyone? That sounds like the sort of thing people would mention."

He groans.

"There you have it," she tells the people. "You're in no greater danger here. He's just mad because there's a lot of stairs underground."

"I am not!"

"He is," she says. "He is also going to shut up and go underground anyway instead of trying to scare anyone further."

"I-" Trevor begins.

"Because the both of us are going to do that right now whether or not he agrees with it." She grabs Alucard's hand and starts in the direction of the mausoleum. She does not nearly fall on her ass doing so because Alucard again actually fucking goes with her - damn near glues himself to her - like he isn't secretly a pile of incredibly heavy rocks pretending to be a person.

Which. Is good? Neither of them are probably going to murder each other at this point, so of the million things that could go wrong, he can stop worrying about that one.

And whatever to the rest of it. Nothing he says now is going to do the actual people of Gresit any good. And maybe they did leave, maybe he did enough, maybe he's feeling guilty over nothing for once. It's not like every last thing goes up in ashes in front of him. And if anything stuff working out seems pretty proportional to how bad it is for him personally and the people here are awful. So. They're probably fine.

Excepting the ones who died because he didn't do a good enough job in the first place.

Hard to forget that when there's entirely too many faces around that weren't in reality.

...well, positives, positives. He's practically looking forward to going underground to seek out exceptionally angry ice ghosts, which is not something he'd ever feel otherwise. Plus, seeing what Sypha just did, maybe instead of walling the things off for now, they can collapse the ceiling on them. And if that's all it takes, then he doesn't have to keep worrying about how Sypha may or may not feel about ghosts because if she decides she's got to kill them all she actually can.

Yeah. This is entirely manageable.

Maybe...maybe Gresit is terrible enough all by itself. Maybe nothing new goes wrong until after they leave.

He laughs, apparently too loudly. Sypha throws a suspicious look over her shoulder and he responds with an expansive shrug of his own. He can't _not laugh_, okay? He is out of practice at so many things and also it feels a lot like his skull might wobble off his neck and just. There is so much else he has to keep from coming out of his mouth already. From even existing in his head, at all, and in fact he needs to stop thinking that at all, think of something else think of -

"Is his hair changing color?" Alucard asks.

Right! Think about whatever stupid thing Alucard's going to whine about next.

Alucard has managed to unstick himself from Sypha now that they're inside a building, and combined with his comment Trevor is still quite partial to the idea that Alucard is slightly exaggerating how totally and utterly fine he is with the sunlight.

Sypha squints, then waves a hand. "Soap. He should have rinsed better," she says, like this whole thing was his fault when he had very reasonably suggested just not getting the stuff in his hair in the first place.

"But it's a different color _now_," Alucard insists.

"It was a bad batch of soap," Sypha says. "It burns the color out as it sits."

"What?" Alucard says. Wow, vampire eloquence.

"I said that already!"

"I thought you were just opposed to soap," Alucard tells him. "So I ignored you."

"No, he knew, it really was very poorly made. It's, well you know, soapmaking is more an art than a science," Sypha says.

Alucard stares at them. After a very long moment, he says, "It's chemistry. It's...there's equations."

"You used alchemy to make soap?!" Trevor demands. Vampires! Vampires and their fucking batshit priorities no one needs soap that bad!

"Chem_is_try," Alucard says, like this clarifies anything at all. "Not al_che_my."

"Magic potions not magic potions," Trevor repeats sarcastically. "Well. That clears everything up. Inherit your great speaking skills from Daddy? When you said your mother went to learn how to be a doctor I thought it involved teaching. Was his contribution solely making up for the fact he hadn't mastered index technology? Did he just find books to throw at her so she could learn from other, smarter people?"

"Chemistry isn't magic," Alucard says. He sounds exasperated, like this is something everyone knows. "It's science."

"Is that what you tell -"

Oh fuck.

It is.

Because. Why would Alucard say this, why would he sound like this, if someone else hadn't said it to him first.

So someone else also thought there was such a thing as 'potions, but not magic potions, science potions'. That this was a distinction anyone ever would possibly care about. And Trevor is pretty sure the rest of the world knows better. So.

So.

How. Did his mother even live this long? Because it had to be his mother saying this, the fact he picked her proves which parent actually raised him. But how could she have been around, and been around as a doctor no less, for decades and decades and decades on end when apparently if anyone asked her defense against witchcraft was going to be telling them she was absolutely doing that?

And more importantly why why why does Alucard keep fucking saying this shit. Trevor doesn't! Trevor keeps his mouth shut! Sypha, Sypha is an absolute champ at keeping her mouth shut!

_I'm not saying your mother deserved to die but_ is absolutely not something Trevor will say, because constructive criticism is remarkably useless once the person's dead. "Like_ you've_ made soap," Trevor says instead.

"I have," Alucard claims. He floats up toward the gargoyle again. "And I'm now realizing why my mother insisted we make it ourselves."

Sypha snickers. "Hard to imagine you doing that."

Alucard looks down at them blandly. "Because…?"

"It's so messy."

"Soap," Alucard says, disbelieving.

Alucard does not actually know what soap is.

Alright, this is hilarious. Is this a vampire thing or some extremely elaborate prank his parents played on him?

"Yes…? The ashes for the lye, and the fat, and ugh," Sypha says, "the smell of it all boiling."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Alucard says, because as usual, Trevor is completely right. Then, "You put _lye_ on his head? That was unreacted lye?"

"Soap!" Sypha insists. "How do you make soap by chemistry?"

"With - with math," Alucard says. "Weighing. Ratios. And I don't know why you're using ashes. Is that why it was black? Lye from ashes…"

"Is where lye comes from," Trevor provides. "We can't all be summoning it from hell or however the fuck Dracula does it."

Alucard brightens. "Potassium hydroxide!" Of course the answer to how Dracula makes soap is 'in Greek'. Trevor should have seen that coming. "We used sodium hydroxide. It works better. And it was pure rather than contaminated with everything else in ashes. It's actually very easy," Alucard continues, and tells them that you just take a solution of GREEK NONSENSE and GREEK NONSENSE and you bubble GREEK NONSENSE through it and it precipitates out GREEK NONSENSE and then...

"Is he saying regular Greek or his weirdo dialect where the words are hilariously wrong?" Trevor asks Sypha.

"If they're words they're not ones I've ever heard," she replies.

"So he's just making shit up now." This is great, because it's a point in favor of Trevor's favorite theory, that Sypha was too nice assuming it was a dialect and Alucard's just saying random Greek words and hoping no one calls him on it.

"I am using precise terminology," Alucard says.

Sypha, who is too nice, says, "Oh, like the specialized languages for magic." Then, "Wait, so you noticed the other words were wrong too?"

Trevor shakes his head. "You mentioned it to me. Uh. Future mentioned. I remember that one of his invisible things is called staffs."

"Bakteria," Sypha confirms after a moment of thought.

Alucard says, "It's because they're shaped like that. Well. Some of them are."

"The _invisible things _look like a staff."

"They're very small, but their shapes can be seen when magnified." Then Alucard gives him a smug look, one impressively amplified by the fact he's currently floating effortlessly in the space above them while Trevor has to climb down rocks with his hands and feet like any other mere mortal. "There are numerous instruments that do so at the castle. Surely you must have happened over them while exploring."

"Happened over and kept going. Surely you don't think Belmonts got this far by poking mysterious monster machines for no reason."

"No, you just poke around your friend's room," Sypha interjects. "You still haven't given any excuse about why you were doing that!"

Alucard saves him from answering by arguing, "He wasn't. He's delusional." And then, because Alucard is also a fucker, "See, he won't even use a ladder. You use the ladder. The rest of your people used the ladder. I saw several more ladders above because those people use ladders."

"If you like ladders so much you're welcome to use them," Trevor says, reaching the ground completely safely.

"I float."

"Oh!" Sypha says. "I forgot!"

And then _everything_ rumbles and moves.

Alucard's look of betrayal is absolutely worth the moment of panic.

"This is going to fall apart," Alucard whines as he takes in the brand-new spiral staircase reaching up and out of the hole they're in, each stone step almost but not quite touching the next. Apparently it's fine when Alucard floats but let other rocks get in on it and suddenly he cares about not defying the laws of nature. "You can't just -"

"I _did_," Sypha says in utter unrepentant delight. "And look, I made railings!"


	16. Blood

Alucard, it turns out, somehow thinks that while he may have stupidly handed Sypha a way of making anything she feels like in defiance of God and man she'll still listen to his lectures about how very serious and boring it needs to be. Alucard is kind of an idiot.

"What you've done won't even last the year," Alucard continues. "You need to -"

"I only need it to last a few hours," Sypha says, because also, she's practical. "Oh! Actually I don't even need that, do I? If it falls apart before we return, I could just put it back again."

Alucard insists, "If you put it together properly, it wouldn't fall apart at all." And then he tries, "The mathematics underlying architecture are actually very interesting."

"Dhampirs are supposed to be good at lying," Trevor tells Alucard. "Are you actually a runt? Are you like the vampire equivalent of raising a puppy on bread, do you look fine on the outside and it's your brain that goes?"

This is supposed to be a joke. He has no idea why Alucard's head snaps toward him with an expression of murderous fury.

"Sorry?" Trevor hazards.

Alucard looks away again. "A parrot," he mutters. It sounds like a curse of some kind.

Okay so yes obviously this is a sensitive subject for mysterious vampire reasons Trevor can't even guess at but now that he's thinking about it it's starting to sound very uncomfortably possible and, "Are you sickly, actually?" Trevor asks. "Malnourished?" If regular vampires eat any human blood maybe half-vampire means only some types of blood work. Alucard's fucked up so much else, maybe he didn't stock enough of the right blood either. Whatever that is. The virgin thing never made much sense given purity's supposed to be what you drive monsters off with, but maybe the other way around? Sinners feeding monsters? Maybe that's why vampires are supposed to encourage that kind of thing. Like turning grapes into wine.

Might explain why they like eating kids so much, kids are little shits.

"I really do look forward to finding out whose voice is echoing out of you," Alucard tells him. "I think I'll eat their heart."

"I feel like that's kind of a yes." Can animals sin? Because Alucard specifically disrecommended goats and if anything can sin it's goats, but maybe he just meant he didn't want Sypha wasting good food.

"Perhaps it'll be some comfort for them to die knowing their concern about my diet has been addressed."

"I'm not saying you suck in a fight, you didn't get killed, but there's different kinds of messed up. You look nothing like Dracula," Trevor continues, "and you can point to any kid, say someone's its father, and everyone can and will immediately find a score of reasons the kid looks just like him, and Dracula actually is your father. I mean, I'm assuming your parents fucked like people. So you really should look like Dracula, and he looked like death warmed over a few dozen times too many. So are you supposed to be more corpsey looking? Is that what healthy looks like on a dhampir? Are you more dead the less dead you look?"

"I thought your family knew about dhampirs," Alucard says. He does not sound like he particularly cares what Trevor answers, but that's fine, Trevor doesn't care about if Alucard cares.

"Mostly in the immediate sense. There's some sort of plan and then fuck, one of them's a halfbreed and that doesn't work right and now someone's in five pieces, hurry up and stake it before anyone else dies. That's not real conducive to telling if one's a bit under the weather. But I do know you guys are not, uh, known for being light eaters."

"Doesn't it seem strange, Belmont, that you would think this yet agree to travel with one?"

"It was a concern, alright? Nothing personal. But it wasn't like Sypha would listen to me, would you Sypha?"

"I'm _listening_ right now," Sypha says. "Listening to and agreeing with aren't the same thing."

"See?"

"And I'm right not to, aren't I?" she continues. "Since Alucard does not devour either of us, or anyone else."

"But you didn't know that."

"You told me so yesterday."

"That doesn't count!" he fumes. "Neither of us knew then, but you just were insisting that since he was your messiah it would work out. Even if prophecies were real,_ which they're not_, there's a whole lot of non-prophecy people in Gresit he could've eaten!" Thinking back on this...so much showing why he shouldn't listen to Sypha, and he still did. Because he _wanted_ to. He really does deserve to be here, doesn't he? "But," he allows. "Alucard didn't. So after a couple days I figured we'd be fine for the Dracula hunt part." Trevor waves a hand dismissively. "Well, there was all that blood down there and dhampirs are also supposed to be able to go a good while without eating." One of the many ways it was hard to actually pin one down. "I figured it was that. It's like, that lodestone thing you were talking about. Dhampirs are all opposites. You can pretend to be normal for ages and then you're eating a village."

Alucard says, "It is so difficult to tell what nonsense you were told and what's your baseline idiocy."

"Unlike Dracula, we just killed stuff. We weren't doing _science_ on what happens if you starve them or chop bits off or shove a spear up their asses."

Alucard doesn't reply to this for a while. Then, "You're confusing dhampirs with newly turned vampires. They're generally the cause of sudden massacres."

"We did not!" Trevor says, offended. "When I said you guys blindside people it's because it's way too hard to scope out all the bloodsuckers just in case one of them was something that practically never exists, not because we can't tell the difference when there is one."

"In a story I heard, after wiping out a village the vampire burned up in the sunrise," Sypha says.

"Symbolism," Trevor dismisses. "Glory to God, let's be good and sit quietly and the problem will go away by itself." Not technically blasphemy, God, Trevor's right about how waiting real hopefully goes for people and blasphemy involves being wrong.

But Sypha shakes her head. "I wasn't there myself, and the Speakers who were arrived only in the aftermath, but we are good at getting as much truth of the matter as can be found. It was kept rather quiet. Apparently the vampire was actually staying with their priest, you see." Of course. The one fucking time they didn't jump on the first excuse to murder someone and it was someone who actually needed killing. "He arrived at night in a bad state and couldn't, or I suppose wouldn't, explain what had happened. The people thought he was sick. He couldn't keep down food, and then in one night he came out and slaughtered almost everyone, and then he didn't go back inside in the morning."

"There was something wrong with that one, then. Vampires can go crazy sometimes like people do."

"It's normal behavior," Alucard says. "Utterly predictable."

"If vampires did that, we wouldn't have to bother hunting them!"

"I suppose the Belmonts decided on thoroughly burying what happened with - I believe he was called Gilles?"

"Fuck you, there was nothing to be ashamed of. And he didn't kill a village or go skipping off into the nearest sunbeam, his sister cut his head off." The lucky bastard.

"Preemptively, I'm sure."

"No shit. Soon as they finished killing the rest and Gilles turned his back." And obviously Alucard disapproves, but hey, he's the one who decided to impune the honor of Trevor's family. "He died without eating anybody." At Alucard's expression, he clarifies, "Anybody who counted. Vampires don't."

"My apologies for ever doubting your family's talent for rationalizing. I should have known better after meeting you."

"Well, I know it was definitely a halfbreed who ate its way through half of Bavaria."

"You think she did that because she got hungry?" Alucard sounds appalled. "Do you - just the logistics - you understand blood is a physical substance and vampires have stomachs, not unending voids?"

"Hard to miss how much of the blood ends up splattered on the ground. If it didn't have to, then the whole thing was an even worse idea. Got itself killed, after all."

"Well. We all have our traditions." What, dying like an idiot?

"You're talking about the demon Ilerai," Sypha says, and yeah Trevor really should've kept his mouth shut, shouldn't he. "That was really a dhampir?"

"Ilaria, not Ilerai, but yes," says Alucard like he sees absolutely no issue with claiming a mass murderer as a relative. Well. Another mass murderer. Trevor supposes eating only a couple cities is a step up from Dracula.

Sypha was fine with Alucard when Trevor was actually trying to convince her he personally ate people probably, so it likely doesn't matter much. "Vampire hunters went after Octavia's court," Trevor starts.

"Court," Alucard repeats with utter disdain.

"That's your stupid word."

"It's not my word."

"So they're your people when you're bitching about skulls but not your people when they're pretentious fuckers? Because you're more a pretentious fucker than you're a skull, Alucard. You're entirely pretentious fucker." Alucard decides to go back to being boring and doesn't reply, so Trevor continues, "_As I was saying_, Octavia's whole lot of murderous bloodsuckers gets wiped out by vampire hunters. Not us, some other, significantly less great guys. Now, they swore that the dhampir escaped in the chaos and that they were definitely looking for it afterward and just couldn't find it, but what we figure happened was they thought it was some human woman and either didn't think it was at all weird they couldn't find her afterward or didn't even bother to look. Not to speak ill of the dead," Trevor adds reflexively. "And dhampirs are really rare. But so are mysteriously healthy humans that run away from the people saving them from monsters, and they were all dead by the end which tells you a lot about how good they were at their job. That dhampir turned out to not even be as dangerous as most of them! Killed a ton of regular people, but my ancestors ended up taking it down without losing anybody. Even the little fuckers brought somebody down with them."

"How surprising," Alucard says sarcastically.

"Hey, if you've got special vampire insight into why vampires do stupid shit, I'm all ears. Did it tell other vampires whatever the fuck it meant to be doing and then they told you?"

Alucard's voice is getting dangerously clipped. "Of course not."

"Really?"

"Who would she have told?" Alucard snaps.

"Despite a lot of hard work, there's still plenty of vampires around," Trevor points out.

"Ahem," Sypha says. "Alucard, why did it happen?"

"How could I possibly know when I'm but a figment of Belmont's slumbering imagination," Alucard retorts. "It's an unsolvable mystery."

That - that doesn't mean anything, Alucard would say that, Alucard's just a dick like that. "What's your problem?"

"We'll never know," Alucard tells him. "We're bound to the limits of your brainpower. A cart hitched to a legless foal."

Sypha huffs. "You're just making yourself angrier dragging this out."

"I can't be angry, I'm not real."

"You can't be angry because it'd get in the way of sulking about everything," Trevor tells him.

Which just makes Sypha turn on him with, "Really! You should know better too."

This is unreasonable, because it's not like Alucard's actually angry. That would require Alucard to have an emotion range beyond being an icy well.

Which means he has a lot in common with the hallway ahead. Perhaps they can commiserate. Ha, maybe that's why he's so insistent on leaving the things around.

Alucard stops well before the ice. Sypha does not stop, but Trevor could guess as much so he holds an arm out in front of her.

"I've never seen anything like this…" she says. She ducks around Trevor and touches the ice. There's a faint and not particularly intelligible sound. Given it's horrible ice ghosts, probably Trevor just found out what a scream of rage sounds like through ice.

Alucard yanks her hand away. "Don't do that!"

"They can't reach us here, though. Right?"

"Yeah," Trevor says. "Literally the only good thing about dealing with these, they're nasty but at least they can't chase you. They can only go a certain distance from their" - skulls - "tethers."

"And that doesn't change over time, if we leave them here?" Sypha asks. "They can't go further and further?"

"No," Alucard says. "The opposite. Once they calm down what remains in this world will stay by their skull."

Shit. So close. So fucking close to getting through this without finding out what happens if Sypha hears about them being ghosts. God, why is Alucard like this?

Well, admittedly Alucard's a demonic mockery of humanity created by Satan, so, possibly Alucard's not God's fault, but also all creation flows from God so that means anything Satan does has God's approval on some level? Ugh. This is the only downside of never talking to priests, you don't know what everyone else has figured out already.

At least Sypha isn't doing anything stupid yet. "You mean, their own skull?" she says. "They're undead?"

"No," Alucard says.

"Why are you even trying to lie about this," Trevor groans. Sypha doesn't seem to care much, so at least one thing is going right. "Yes, they're ice ghosts. They freeze people to turn them into more ice ghosts. They're incredibly dangerous so if you kill them let's drop the ceiling instead of going closer."

"None of that is true."

Trevor groans again. Back to the other, more pressing question of why, and also _how_, Alucard is so bad at lying. "They're not dangerous. Even you're too scared to walk into that room but they're not dangerous."

"They made it perfectly clear they don't want anyone near them."

"Well, tell them that's very mutual."

"I can't tell them anything. They don't want anything to do with me." Lovely, now Alucard's losing his grip on sarcasm.

"Alucard," Sypha says, "what are they, if not undead?"

"Undead transform after death," Alucard says. "These transform themselves and leave behind their body, which then dies. Likely of exposure, though other regulatory processes could fail. I don't know much about the specifics, _because they do not want anything to do with me_, but the skull of their former body still serves some purpose to them and they are harmed by harming it, so they're understandably concerned about that."

"Murderously."

"If you won't leave them alone."

"And they lure people out and kill them if you do," Trevor adds.

"They do not. They can't. It's a voluntary transformation."

"So they mind-control people into killing themselves. That's even worse, do you not get that?"

Alucard opens his mouth, then suddenly bites open his wrist right through the glove and slaps his now gushing hand on the stone beside him. The blood crawls across the rocks with impossible speed.

Trevor is now staring at a stone wall.

Well. That's a way of resolving the issue of if they should block it off or deal with it now.

Alucard looks...wrong. Bad. Wrung out and _less_, probably because a whole lot of him just ended up in that wall and blood loss is one of the few things vampires can't shrug off.

"So," Trevor manages. "I guess that's why you wanted Sypha to fix your shitty courtyard."

"That wasn't the same spell," Sypha says. Her voice is very tight. So yeah, Alucard's definitely looking bad if even she thinks he looks fucked up.

There's explosive sounds like trees bursting in winter and Trevor watches as frost blossoms across the cracking stone.

Alucard yelps, then grabs both of them by the collars and hauls them backward, although they don't actually get any further from the wall.

He does not let go and from the downward weight Trevor's not sure Alucard can.

Ice flakes to the ground as the shattered rock that Trevor's pretty sure is now a lot further up the hallway than it was a moment ago melts back together.

Alucard is still gripping his collar.

"What just happened?" Sypha asks.

Is Alucard about to eat someone? Does Trevor need to do something about this?

"...I…" Alucard trails off. The weight on Trevor disappears as he finally lets go. "They noticed. Too close. I upset them."

Well. Alucard may not really care about Sypha, but he hates Trevor by now, or hates him more because possibly he always hated Trevor and was just being polite some of the time, so it's unlikely he'll pick Sypha as the target. Plus Trevor definitely has more blood in him and so is the better choice.

"They're trying to get out, then," Sypha says.

Unless Alucard's complaints about Trevor are because booze ruins the taste. Fuck, what if Alucard's a picky eater? Is that even a thing vampires can be? If Alucard is going to go crazy and-or die without food, he'd fucking better not be concerning himself with who's_ tastier_.

"No! They, they can't perceive objects. What I did, it would have looked like me to them, I should have -"

"That was_ aimed at you_?"

"They -"

Vampires probably can't tell if you're healthy or hungover or straight up poisoned, it's all just blood to them right? Must be, because it wouldn't have worked if…

"Can you smell holy water?" Trevor interrupts.

"...what?" Alucard manages.

"What?" Sypha demands.

It's a simple question. "Alucard, can you smell holy water," Trevor repeats.

"No."

So vampires aren't picky about blood like people are about food and whatever complaints Alucard has about Trevor are separate from his suitability as a meal. Alucard will probably attack Trevor if he's going to attack anybody. That's fine then.

Wouldn't even hurt, really. It's surviving that hurts.


	17. Stomach

As Trevor really should've been able to predict, nothing happens because since when is Alucard good for interesting, or smart, or _helpful_. Alucard just trails behind them with his gait subtly dragging in the manner of someone tired, either doing a stunning impression of not wanting to bite anyone or actually not being interested.

Possibly this was what he was getting at about vampires being limited by their stomachs, it's like how getting stabbed doesn't make people immediately want to stuff roast goose in their mouths.

And sometimes they don't at all and you have to shove goose between their teeth before they take the hint.

Trevor says, "You said your keep didn't connect to this. How about your giant fuckup of gears, is there a secret passageway between the two?"

"...yes..." Alucard says.

And there's that big hole in the ceiling between that area and his one with the coffin and the blood. "You should probably check on all that too," Trevor declares. "What with it all breaking because you're only good at lecturing other people on how things go."

"...yes..."

Does Alucard want that secret passageway, the one that would let someone bypass whatever traps his stair maze has, to remain secret? Well, he's shown them the others, and asking like Trevor thinks Alucard has a reason to want Trevor not to know is going to sound suspicious. If Alucard isn't already worried Trevor is planning on sneaking back down here to murder him when this is all done, Trevor sure as fuck isn't going to plant the idea. Bad enough Trevor has to jump at every shadow, he's not going to do that to somebody else.

Though. Would Alucard care if he thought Trevor was going to do that? Ugh, that sure puts showing off the ways down in a different light.

But no, he said he believes Trevor now about them not coming back here. That's why he's not hiding anything.

Alucard pauses and reaches for one of the sconces on the wall. Trevor expects him to pull the whole thing like it's a lever - that's how these kind of secret passages are supposed to work, you know? But instead Alucard presses against one of the small bits of iron at the back that looks like it's attaching the sconce to the stone but apparently not because it's just slid away with a click. Vampires! Nothing the right size, everything tiny fiddly bits or a dozen castles piled together. And indeed, an unnecessarily massive chunk of the wall glides aside to reveal more fucking stairs.

"More fucking stairs!" Trevor announces. "Well, that is great. Unfortunately, I'm beat. I plan on actually sleeping this night, and doing it above ground because, full offense, I fucking hate underground Gresit even more than I hate regular Gresit. I must reluctantly pass on going with you and hearing your excuses every time something collapses explosively that it was meant to collapse explosively."

Sypha looks at him curiously. "Will things be fine tonight, really?"

"Yeah, we either got all the demons or whatever's left flew home with tails tucked between their legs. Even on the road out, we only run across some heading for Argo, and that's not for _days_ because you _won't fucking leave_."

She glances back to Alucard, who makes no argument. Probably just because Trevor's very right.

Back to the point he's trying to make. "Sypha, since she's a human who also sleeps unlike you, should do the same. If any evil owl shows up she can burn my tongue out before I tell whoever you're worried about that as it can plainly see we're still in Gresit," Trevor continues. "And the Speakers are going to be busy with everyone tomorrow and since that's why Sypha insists we stay, she'll be busy with that."

"And what a good decision that was," Sypha says. Trevor's stomach lurches and then his thoughts jump to her off the cuff lie earlier about contagious curses, because it can't happen the same way since he knows but it can't not happen because it's Hell and so then will it be her fingers blackening and the red climbing up her arms like strangling vines and. But would that be worse. There wouldn't be anything he could do. Anything she could demand of him. So. Barely bad at all. "They would have died if we'd just left!" Sypha insists.

Right, they died and turns out that's his fault.

"I... I would suggest you not get your hopes up," Alucard says after a moment. "I'm sorry, but it's very likely they'll still die."

Huh. No, that kind of makes sense, right? Because Alucard didn't talk about his mother until after they left, so he didn't know there was anything Alucard could've done. Trevor fucked up in the first place by letting any of it happen. Why should it've been on anybody else to clean up his mess?

Alright, yeah, God, that's fair.

"I think there is a very good chance it will work," Sypha retorts. "We do have some little experience with infections."

Alucard says, "You're trying to counter magically induced sepsis by feeding people onion soup."

"Raw onion," she corrects.

"Worse."

"There were complaints. But better than dying of a curse."

"I meant," Alucard huffs, and Trevor interrupts with, "Just because Dracula didn't like onion on his food doesn't mean it doesn't work. Speakers know what they're doing."

Sypha elaborates, "Onion poultices are awful to make, you know. We wouldn't do it if they did nothing. They really do help. "

"Probably just by repelling flies," Alucard dismisses.

"What do flies have to do with anything?"

Alucard stares at her like he's just been kicked in the head by an ox. After a moment he says, "Can you repeat that?"

"I said, what do flies have to do with anything?"

He looks away, then waves a hand in front of his face. "Hm."

"What?"

"It's not like I need grammar," Alucard mutters. "Aphasia isn't coordination. And a stroke can't kill me."

"What," Sypha says more decisively.

Alucard looks at them again. "Fine," he says, excessively clearly. "I will return later." And he actually seems to be waiting for a response.

"Right, fine," Trevor agrees. He waves a hand.

Alucard nods and heads down the stairs.

"That was really weird," Sypha says after a moment.

"Eh, vampires." Trevor waits to see if Alucard comes back up to be affronted they're talking about him. No so far. He shrugs and starts walking away. "Blood loss makes people loopy, it fucks up vampires as much or maybe more."

Sypha, who's perfectly smart so it must be that she just really doesn't _want_ to get that Alucard being a vampire means he's a vampire, looks back over her shoulder and says, "Wait, but then shouldn't we not leave him alone?"

Bringing up the fact Alucard could remedy his problem of not having enough blood by passing the problem along to her is a terrible idea, counter-productive to them not killing each other and feels kind of cruel on top of that given Alucard so clearly didn't. And Alucard will definitely take it as some sort of personal slight and not just Trevor pointing out that it is, technically, a thing that could happen. And if Trevor does sort of expect it, well, it's Hell, how is he not supposed to expect something to go horribly wrong when he doesn't expect it? It's nothing personal.

Only Alucard takes everything personally. If he didn't, if he wasn't all weird about, about just everything, Trevor wouldn't have had to concern himself about talking Alucard into going off for supper in the first place.

And Trevor had barely even made comments about eating people after the first couple days!

"He's older than both of us put together, I _think_ he can _probably_ manage to navigate stairs. And." Trevor shrugs again. "If he can't he'll still be fine falling down all of them. Dracula punched him through half the walls of his infinite castle and Alucard was still standing at the end."

Sypha makes a mildly irritated _hmmm_ at this, having no doubt put together that Trevor's saying tumbling down endless stairs is less dangerous than whatever stupid magic Alucard just did to put himself at risk of it. "He really wanted us to stay away from those void acolytes, didn't he?"

"Yeah."

"Is that..." Her voice drops, like she's anxious about being overheard. Nice effort, definitely futile. Ha, but what isn't. "...how he feels about the Night Horde, as well?"

Oh, yeah, Trevor can see how it'd come off. "No, he's fine with killing them. Same with the other vampires. Apparently he's just weird about these things in particular, fuck knows why." Sypha's own stairs are still floating about just fine. Trevor lightly kicks the side of the lowest step, more out of curiosity than anything, and finds he's slightly disappointed to find it doesn't shift at all. He was expecting it to be more springy. "They all look like women, I guess? Maybe that's it."

Sypha's next _hmmm_ is a lot more irritated.

"Hey, _I_ was fine with killing them," Trevor retorts.

"No, you weren't."

"I'm fine with them being made dead in a way that doesn't involve any of us entering the same room as them."

"Are these...like the stories about the daughters of the north wind? Is that what you were both trying so hard to keep away from?" Sypha says suspiciously. "Do they look like women _wearing clothes_, Belmont?"

"I feel," he says carefully, "that you are trying to find something to be mad about."

"_I_ feel concerned that the two men I am with are afraid of naked women, and that perhaps we are doomed if any of the Night Horde have tits."

"You think prophecies get garbled? I can promise you it's way worse with these kinds of monsters. Those things don't sing, or dance, or" - he snorts - "_marry_, or do anything at all like the stories. They just shriek and kill anyone who gets within reach. Also, they're not actually women."

"Well...maybe not anymore, but they were, though."

"I..." Trevor sighs. "Look, what Alucard said about them not being undead, he might be right about that. It'd make sense of some things. But I also know they've got nothing to do with the person who used to be the corpse either, so he's wrong about it being a transformation like vampires. I really think he's just making shit up to cover anything he doesn't know. They mostly lure out women but they snare men sometimes too, and they all come out looking the same. Maybe they're like, like maggots are born from regular corpses and an ice spirit comes out of a frozen one. Nothing to do with the person besides using it as food."

"You know, maggots aren't really born from rotting meat," Sypha says.

"Huh. Really?"

She nods. "And you're very quick to assume Alucard's lying."

"Oh, come on, he lies all the time!" Trevor says. "You've seen it already. Like about sunlight, obviously it's bugging him because he acts weird every time he's outside."

Sypha turns and stares at him like he's said something very stupid.

"What? I'm right."

"So you also think he was lying when he directly told us his reasons for not wanting to come outside."

"I mean..." Trevor says, because _yes _does seem kind of dickish when you put it that way. "I'm not saying he does want a mob of people to come after him, nobody wants to deal with a mob, but that's got nothing to do with him acting all weird."

"I think I am starting to see why you'll be sneaking into his room and rifling through his papers trying to figure anything out," Sypha tells him.

And what the fuck does that mean.

How was he supposed to know.

How was _he_ supposed to know _Sypha_ didn't know Sypha thought it was _fine_ so how, God, can that also be _his fucking fault_.

"And from the sounds of it still having no idea," she continues.

"Like it's so damn obvious!" And now she's not looking at him like he should know better she's looking at him like he just screamed at her and he didn't mean that and that makes him want to keep screaming which is very possibly the worst reaction he could have but then that makes sense doesn't it of course he'd just keep fucking up.

Silence.

Silence.

Silence.

"Was it such a surprise you upset him earlier?"

Trevor stares at the stones below his feet. "It's not like he actually gets upset about things. He hasn't really got feelings."

"Oh boy."

"He _doesn't_," Trevor says. "Not because he's a vampire, because he's him. He's acting like he does but really he has one singular feeling and that's it. He might as well be a golem. A sad golem. He's going to do stuff until the words run out and then nothing more." And she is staring at him again like he's managed to disappoint her already rock-bottom expectations and, "Look, you'll - you'll get it soon. You're the one who told me first."

"That he's a golem? Odd turn of phrase for me."

"That he's like an icy well of sadness and there's shit-all that can be done about it."

"So you admit you know he's sad about what's happened and yet you can't see why that story about another dhampir would upset him."

"I mean, I could guess it would annoy him," Trevor admits. "Since he's always pissy when vampires get brought up. But he started it bringing my family into it. And it's not like there's a real reason to be upset. I wasn't accusing him of killing hundreds of people. He knows I know he's not going to kill people, he's _fucking offended_ I don't think he'll kill people, so he knows I wasn't suggesting he was the same as it."

"You told a story where someone loses their family -"

"Their 'family' of mass murderers."

"- and kills people in revenge. Are you really going to tell me that doesn't sound anything like what's happening now?"

"Alucard's mother was an innocent person which is completely different and I even said it was fine for Alucard to kill the bishop over it if he wanted!"

"You can't possibly be this thick," Sypha says. "_Dracula is doing the same thing as Ilaria did._"

"Not really the same. Dracula's doing a lot better at killing tons of people," Trevor points out. At her frustrated growl, he rolls his eyes. "What do you want? Alucard agrees it's right we kill him! He kills demons with us, he kills other vampires with us, he stakes Dracula, so no I don't know why he's the one who's also going on about how _yeah that cabinet of murderer skulls, those are my people- "_

"You - when you said - you meant you did take trophies?" Sypha shouts at him. "Your family cut off their heads and kept them as trophies?!"

Trevor groans. _"_Sypha, they're not like - you'll get it when you meet actual vampires, Alucard doesn't count."

"No?" Sypha says in a tone of voice like she's already made up her mind about listening to him. "Because he certainly seems to think- "

"Is he like those demons?" Trevor snaps back. "Because _that_ is what vampires are. Ripping people into pieces, decorating with guts for garlands, they - they fucking nest in corpses, Sypha, their idea of a nursery is a mass grave, the only thing worse than a regular vampire is a halfbreed one, so really if there's any _disrespect_ of _his people's_ precious _traditions_, it's that we made sure they were dead before we cut them up and we did it to to learn stuff instead of for the fun of it. You know the kind of stuff Dracula did even before this, everyone does! You think his castle isn't packed full of human skeletons? And worse?"

Sypha is pinching her nose dramatically. She's not getting any sympathy out of Trevor there. Whatever headache he's giving her does not hold a candle to Trevor's overall misery. He swears he's even sicker this time around than the last.

"Fine, I'm sorry Alucard is so fucking sensitive about every little thing!"

"I'm preemptively sorry either of us let you wander around there on your own," she mutters. He gags suddenly, acid in his throat. "What could I have been thinking?"

"Yeah you. Really fucked up there."

As did Trevor somehow, maybe he ate a bad apple this time around.

"Why did we go back to Dracula's castle?" Sypha asks.

"Oh you know," Trevor manages. "Visiting." And then he retches.


	18. Family

The good thing about Trevor maybe having food poisoning is Sypha's distracted being smug she thought to include railings on her stairs so he can't fall over the edge. He says Dracula's castle becomes Alucard's castle and she nods because there's nothing so weird about visiting in that case.

"And that's why he doesn't come back here," she says.

"Right."

And. He. He just can't keep his fucking mouth shut. "Do you - do Speakers, do your funerals - it's, your grandfather, he wouldn't leave back then with somebody missing, even if they were probably dead, and I promised to get the body if they'd leave, but they were really just agreeing so I'd stick around because they believe in you, so would they, would Speakers, I know you have funerals but do you need to?"

Sypha shakes her head. "Our traditions are important to us, but, not so much we'd risk the living for the dead."

So at least he hadn't made things worse by being selfish. Bad enough he's in Hell, nobody else should have to be because he wasn't thinking.

"You're not upset, are you?" Sypha asks. "That he lied?"

Trevor shakes his head quickly. "No, I'm glad -" And he is, isn't he? Is he allowed that? It's not like it'd have been better if he hadn't. He shakes his head harder. "And it wasn't exactly - I volunteered. I wanted them to leave, they didn't want to leave, I offered to get you for them if they promised they'd go." He pauses. "Okay, they lied about that part, but that was right. People died but the ones who didn't, it's all because of you. I was planning to leave. I would've."

"But you didn't."

"But I meant to."

"But you didn't. That's what counts."

"Apparently not!" Trevor snaps, throwing up his hands. "Apparently doing shit isn't good enough, because here I am doing it all over again! Apparently what I said did count!"

"What did you say that was so terrible?"

"That I was leaving!"

Sypha looks distinctly unimpressed.

"That I was leaving and they were all going to die and if you didn't want to die first you needed to leave because I was leaving."

"But we didn't leave."

"You shouldn't have had to stay in harm's way for me to get my head out of my ass!"

"We had to stay to find the sleeper," Sypha says.

"Yeah, _I know_. There was an argument about it. You won,_ because I never win arguments_."

She shakes her head. "I'm glad we could help the people of Gresit, but you understand, we would have otherwise left as soon as the talk against us started, or sooner."

"I know," he repeats. "It wasn't your job, it was my job. Maybe you haven't heard, but I'm a Belmont. It's what we do."

Sypha considers this for a bit. "Isn't it mine too? Or, will be? Because I will be."

"Uh," he says.

"A Belmont?"

Not technically. Or. Only technically. Depending on which way around you looked at it. On how you weighed the untried spirit against the forged letter of the law. "That's not really how it works."

"It isn't," Sypha says with the cadence of _You're a liar._ "Hm. Boys only, is it?"

"Absolutely," Trevor tries. He will welcome whatever Sypha has to say about that.

"Yes, you did mention how your mother was scarred in a tragic knitting incident."

"It's - Mom was - I am really not drunk enough to talk about my family tree."

"Ominous." When he doesn't respond, Sypha continues, "Exactly how noble was your family? Full of pure blue blood and extra fingers?"

If it gets this dropped, "Yeah."

"Funny. I'd heard rather the opposite."

"Sypha," he groans. "You don't have to be so smug." Well, this conversation had definitely gone differently. But then, he had been drunk enough at the time. And had cared what she'd think of his family. Of him.

And it would've been better if he hadn't.

"I'd heard," Sypha says, "that half the Belmonts were bastards."

"Conservative estimate. But that's noble as fuck right there," Trevor tells her. "How many lords have you known who kept out of the whorehouse?"

"I've known none to have interest in the results."

"I don't know why everyone had to make such a big deal about this. The whole, the line of inheritance thing, everything was in order, we were about the only ones _not_ getting into spats about it, and nobody was marrying into other houses so it wasn't like we were messing shit up for them."

"So half your brothers? More?"

"I mean," Trevor says, "who pays attention to how many siblings you have, right?"

"Everyone. Everyone does."

"You had one brother Sypha what would you know. Why don't we talk about him since you want to talk about dead people so much!"

She glares. "You are cranky."

"I am sober."

"I would say this" - she gestures at him - "is far from sobriety."

"Tell me more about _your_ brother, Sypha."

"Terribly cranky," she snaps.

"How old _was_ he anyway? What'd he look like, I mean, back when he had a face? Do you even remember?"

She finally, finally shuts up. Thank you, God.

They make it all the way to the doorway out of the mausoleum in blessed silence but then Sypha says, "Wait."

He looks at her.

"About your family -"

He groans and tries to walk out. She grabs his sleeve and tugs backward. "What?"

"Not your family members," she promises, and continues to tug to the side so they're no longer visible to anyone wandering by outside. "What you said about vampires and dhampirs. I understand the Belmonts know a great deal about monsters. But…" she says, and it's in that _considerate _tone of voice, like she's worried about sparing his stupid feelings by bringing up perfectly reasonable doubts as if Trevor is really that pathetic, "are you sure it's all correct?"

"Vampires are evil and dhampirs are extra evil," Trevor tells her, again. "Look, I get that - that people make stuff up. That people see stuff that's _different_ and lie that it's _evil_. But even if actually it was my family who were evil -"

"I'm not saying that."

"- if they were evil and wanted people like Alucard dead, they'd have made up a lie that sounded like him. People don't say the Speakers are dangerous because you hack people's heads off in the street, because then anyone who met you would know it was all lies. So they say you act all helpful but it's only so no one will realize how you secretly do stuff like demon-summoning or stealing men's cocks to keep in a box."

"You're all strangely obsessed with that," Sypha agrees. "Every town there's someone asking to replace their penis with a better one from the penis box we are absolutely carrying around because who wouldn't want to carry around a box full of crawling, oat-eating dicks. Or just to see it. Why would you want to see that? And why am I always the one they think keeps it when only men would ever care this much about penises?"

"The oats part is weird." And wouldn't it mean you got a dick with oats crammed up there? How bad would yours have to be for that to be an improvement?

"All of it is weird!"

"The point is," Trevor says, still wincing a bit at the idea, "the bestiary's right about dhampirs that aren't Alucard. Exactly right. The other dhampir I saw was coated head to toe in gore and giggling." He hadn't killed it, which is less of a regret than most of his regrets but still stings. Killing Carmilla had to take priority and unfortunately, Carmilla was about the only vampire there with enough sense to not spend all her time cooing over the bloody little monster like aunts at a christening. "Alucard, maybe it's, it's like he's a hinny instead of a mule? With the other dhampirs, the mother's the vampire. You see," Trevor says, because Sypha did ask about dhampirs, "corpses can't get pregnant. But corpses can get people pregnant." Sypha makes a face. "Hey, you think I liked learning that either? Still a fact. They don't let biting the other person's throat out ruin the mood. And I think you get the soul from the mother so he could have one while the rest don't, since you lose your soul when you turn into a vampire."

"You get your soul when you take your first breath," Sypha says, like he doesn't already _fucking know_ what she thinks, God, like they didn't have a whole - "Oh, your people think it's at quickening, right? While it's still inside."

He snaps his mouth shut again before he can scream at her to stop talking, teeth pressing tight enough to ache, breathes, says curtly, "Vampires don't have them. They die, they're soulless, then something nasty finds the empty hole and crawls in."

"So that ancestor of yours who became a vampire, you believe he lost his soul in the process? Even though he fought the other vampires?"

"He's why we know for sure. Last pages of Gilles' diary talk about it. There's just nothing, and you can't even care there's nothing, and his body had to keep moving anyway." And that hadn't even been the worst thing in them, it'd been - "He wrote about his sister," Trevor says. "Beth. About picturing her dead, and then about killing her. Because when they met up she'd asked him if he was already starting to want to kill her and if he could keep it together a little longer or not, and he kept writing after like poking a wound, about crushing her head between his hands or sinking his teeth into her throat like he did to other vampires or ripping her arms off and watching her bleed out, how no matter what it was he just couldn't feel anything, right until he finally got to die properly… They don't have souls," Trevor finishes. "No one could be like that and still have one."

"Oh. He knew she was going to kill him," Sypha says, like that's the relevant thing here and not the horrible soulless monster fantasizing about murdering his baby sister part.

Trevor shrugs. "Benefits of having a big family, you know someone will manage to fix your fuckup even if you can't manage to get yourself killed going after the other vampires."

"Huh."

"What?"

"I think Alucard's been worried you're like this because of whatever the strangely incompetent vampire puppetmaster did."

"Like what?" Trevor demands.

She waves a hand. "You. Being you. I wasn't sure what to make of it either."

"What," Trevor demands again.

"I was wondering if it was about you being confused about your situation. You don't think _we're_ real, after all. But it is apparently just a Belmont thing." She shakes her head and adds, "I suppose I should have worked that out when you were talking about your family tradition of eating rocks and how Alucard was being foolish to point out that could kill you," because apparently she's taking Alucard's side and Trevor is the only one of them who understands how responsibility works. At his increasingly exasperated look, she says, "What I'm getting at is the rest of us are concerned about not dying."

"_I outlived -_" he starts, monetarily blind with outrage and then catches himself. "I was great at not dying."

"Well, good," she says. It is not good. "Keep doing that."


	19. Stuck

_So turns out this is in fact surprisingly compatible with S3, partly because S3 didn't move the timeline much forward and partly because apparently my reads of the characters were more valid than I expected. Hooray, and also, I'm so sorry. (And we got two whole vampire facts and THAT contradicts something I decided, of course…)_

* * *

Trevor is planning on spending the rest of the day, or possibly forever, he's flexible, seething at Sypha and the unmitigated gall that is _her_ thinking she has any right to talk to him about _not dying_. It's probably - okay, definitely - fucked up but the fact is incandescent rage is an improvement on any other emotion he can think of.

But it's nearing evening and the rest of Gresit still exists, in its nonexistent but convincing and distracting way, and he was busy with the courtyard and the ice ghosts and forgot there's also fake terrified people to deal with.

Right. He already knows all this, it'll be a snap.

Demons? They're dead. There won't be another attack anytime soon. Yes, really. Yes, _really_. Go home, actually sleep. No, the hugging and crying should be directed at Sypha. Take one for the team, Sypha.

God? God's part in this is for priests, Trevor cannot overemphasize that he is not qualified in the area, but yeah, Trevor does think burning the not-a-church down tomorrow is a fine start. Whatever went wrong there went wrong enough the bishop and his men couldn't tell, so Christ alone knows how, or if, it's fixable, and yeah, Trevor agrees that's fucked up and creepy and in conclusion, fire. ("Vindictive much," Sypha mutters, and he is absolutely not, God, "Torches for the goose are torches for the gander.")

Lazy-ass vampire Jesus? He's still around, don't worry about it.

"Can he be trusted?" someone demands, and huh, that's sensible and not at all what Gresit was like. Slipping, God? The person next to him tries to shush him like a mythical savior would leave everyone to die over one person not kissing his floating ass enough, which is precisely what you'd expect from the people of Gresit, but he continues, "If he's the son of this vampire…"

Oh, yeah, Trevor did not share that particular fact originally for obvious and now validated reasons. "Yes," Trevor says. "He's also the son of a human. He tried to stop Dracula a year ago and got cut almost in half. And if you can't trust someone Dracula wants dead, who can you trust, right?"

That doesn't just convince the man but gets a strong ripple of approval about how yes, that does make perfect sense.

...wait, does that mean Trevor's wrong about something? Hm. He kind of is, yeah, since the bishop's dead despite being wholly untrustworthy and he's sure there's plenty of other bastards out there getting ripped up by demons as well. Maybe that's the secret to being believed by people, you've got to be wrong and it's just about being wrong in the right way.

Aw fuck why is Sypha frowning what is it, did she realize that, what's the issue it's not like she even cares about lying to people.

"What are you mad about?" he whispers.

"I'm not," she lies back. Fine, be that way. It's not like Sypha will actually be able to drop a subject.

And then, barely a few steps after Trevor convinces the crowd to go to their homes, or into someone else's home because fuck if he cares where exactly, she whispers, "Alucard said that if we were all dead, the vampires would die too. That they'd starve without humans to eat."

"Yeah?"

"And he's a vampire," she continues.

"I don't know," Trevor says. "He said he didn't eat people and I know he doesn't."

"But you think he lies about everything."

"I didn't say _everything_." Sypha looks at him and he scowls. "It's not like you're worried about it! I know you don't think he's going to eat us because I told you for days he was probably going to eat us or at least somebody and you wouldn't listen to me."

"Of course he's not going to," Sypha says. Trevor groans. "You must have a terrible time of it if you complain every time I'm right."

That's sure the sort of sobering thought that would send Trevor diving back into a bottle if they weren't largely smashed by inconsiderate demons. Truly, Dracula's evil knows no bounds.

"No, what I'm wondering is, it would mean Dracula meant to kill his son from the start, wouldn't it? It was a suicide pact."

"I don't know if Dracula needed humans, actually," Trevor says. "There were these big, cold metal drums in the castle that were magicked to make infinite blood."

"Really? You're sure?"

He nods. "When I cracked one, it burst apart and froze at the same time, and there was way more than would fit inside. Got my leg stuck in the bloody ice ball. I'm not a vampire, so I couldn't tell you if it was human blood, but if it was, it'd explain why Dracula wasn't concerned about killing us all. Maybe Alucard grew up drinking that."

Sypha considers this. "I'd have to ask him, but I suspect it's not possible to get around it like that. What they need from humans should require humans, that's the way magic works. Maybe Dracula just killed a lot of people and was using magic to store it. He's always slaughtering people in the stories."

Trevor shrugs. "Maybe. But vampires are immortal so no matter how much he had stored, he'd starve eventually."

"Dracula loved a human, and now he's going to make sure there's never any more humans," Sypha says. "And he tried to kill his son, and the other vampires will starve. Absolutely everyone, gone. What does he have to live for?"

Would've been nice for Actual Sypha to have shared that little revelation back when it mattered. Because then maybe Trevor'd have - no, no, he wouldn't. Can't even really lie to himself, can he? No. At best, Trevor would have thought it, once, and then figured it wasn't his problem, and that he didn't want it to be his problem, and that besides if anything was wrong Sypha would know and and and - was it that unreasonable really to think Alucard could, could fucking handle himself? Could be trusted? Even if she'd said that about Dracula it's not like Alucard was anything like Dracula. Right there in the name.

"Wait," Sypha says. "Why didn't you just ask Alucard about it, when it becomes his castle?"

Fuck.

"Did you sneak off so he wouldn't know who to blame?" she asks, eyes narrow.

"I didn't sneak off," Trevor says, and she rolls her eyes. Fine. He likes her version better anyway.

He'd left her there.

It'd been cold and he'd left her there.

He'd left her there, and he'd stopped talking to her after that because he wasn't some sort of crazy person who talked to people who weren't there, and he shouldn't have even done that much when there's no way she'd have wanted to listen to anything he'd had to say, and now here he is again doing the same thing, but this time he's taking advantage of how Fake Sypha doesn't know any of what he did because he's just shit, he's a piece of shit and a coward and he missed her and what kind of excuse is that and if he ever actually respected her he'd tell her the truth so turns out he doesn't.

He's learning so much about himself. Maybe once he finishes fucking up on every temptation in Purgatory he'll get to be punted into regular pitchfork-stabbings Hell.

Not that it'd be any better for her to know really because she'd do anything to stop Dracula and she's stuck with him and he'd just be making her miserable by being around someone she loathes and what a convenient excuse that is for him.

That's not all his fault, he wanted to just leave and they won't even have to spend time searching when he can tell her where the book with the castle-wrecking teleportation spell is, or at least about which section and what color it is, and then they could kill Dracula and it'd be done and he could fuck off the side of Alucard's fucking castle.

Probably won't do any good but God, worth a shot, right? And maybe he's wrong, maybe he won't just end up back in Gresit but land in the lake of fire like priests are always promising. See, Sypha? He can be positive.

There's a hand waving in front of his face and he has to jerk to a halt to avoid hitting it.

"Really," he complains.

"Our house is this way," she says, pointing to his left.

"Oh."

"You're very distractible." And she sounds mostly like she's teasing him but there's a seriousness underneath that really seems excessive for Trevor just not noticing where he was walking. She probably thinks he's going to fuck up in a fight. Great. Now she and Alucard will both spend the trip worrying he's dead weight.

Trevor considers contesting that but it's better to get off the topic before the question of what's so distracting comes up. Not like he ever wins arguments, anyway. "Tomorrow when you find out if the onion works or doesn't will you be satisfied at knowing the answer and stop insisting we need to stick around?"

"That's what you were thinking about?"

"I guess," he tells her.

"You guess."

Trevor points out, "Being in Gresit means constantly being reminded I'm in Gresit." Then, "Don't give me that look!"

"Why do you hate being here so much, really?"

"It's - it's Gresit!"

"An unremarkable city," Sypha says. "A bit on the smaller side."

"It's full of dead people!" Trevor snaps. "_I don't normally have my failures staring me in the face longer than it takes to burn the fucking body!_"

This Sypha's eyes widen a bit at that last part, because the one thing Speakers and the Church agreed about was the merits of an intact corpse for burial like they don't all end up a bunch of bones either way, and if anyone asked his opinion, which, barring Actual Sypha, they would not, the idea God needed your body intact the same way a necromancer would seemed like awful little faith in God's godness. And Trevor's pretty sure he did burn and that evidently didn't keep him out of God's clutches.

This being Fake Sypha, she doesn't say anything about that because she thinks he's crazy and you don't argue with crazy people.

"Look," Trevor tries. "I just. I want to get this over with. And you agree. Kind of. I mean, you want to keep going and, adventure and heroics and that kind of shit, but you want to go out and do all that instead of sitting around here, and no offense" - which gets him the sucked-in breath of offendedness like he didn't just say - "if I hadn't just seen Alucard's little horrorshow I would say you are actually the worst person in the whole city to be helping, so you should tell Alucard we need to go blow up demons and leave the poor bastards be."

Well, at least Sypha stopped looking pitying because now she's too busy being irritated at him for that sort of thing.

"You're really good at killing things," he tries. "So you could be doing more good by leaving Gresit to kill things."

"You should've led with that."

"I really should've."


	20. Harrowing

The thing about Speakers is, they try, they really do, but they also cannot keep their mouths shut so if you talk to them long enough to run through the safe topics - maybe a half hour at most if they're a really timid bunch - they will absolutely move on to other ones instead of shutting up around the stranger the way reasonable people do.

So it's inevitable the conversation would quickly turn into poking at the fact he is, according to Sypha, 'very religious' yet is responding to all their questions on what exactly that is with 'look, I dunno how it works' because he doesn't, he never really knew much and current circumstances prove he wasn't even right about most of that.

"How can you believe anything strongly if you don't know what you believe at all?"

"I can't tell poison mushrooms apart from good ones either," Trevor points out. "And that's Christianity. Gotta worry about anything where you can end up foaming at the mouth and shitting your intestines out if you make one mistake."

"What?"

"You don't get it! Speakers don't have to worry about going to Hell in the first place," Trevor grumbles. "When do you do that, anyway, if it's not a funeral thing? Is it like baptism?"

"We don't do that," Sypha says.

"I know you don't do baptism, that's why I said like. I mean whatever it is you do so God can't get your souls and send you to Hell."

"Oh," Sypha says, and there is ice crawling through Trevor's veins at the sound because she sounds like Trevor is - "You're mistaken. We don't believe in that. Not for us and not for anyone."

"So you -" Trevor chokes. "Not just you, all of you, Speakers -"

"We don't believe in Hell."

"It's not about belief!" he says, or maybe he doesn't, maybe it's just a shriek, and how stupid it is to be speaking to her at all when he's not speaking to her at all and what is it like in Sypha's version? Is he there? Does she hate him enough that God's dredged up his image? He gulps air and manages, "This isn't real, you're just saying- " But everything else had sounded like Sypha and Sypha, the things she'd said, he hadn't been listening had he, wasn't paying attention because he didn't know how much it'd matter, and he already knew they didn't believe in Satan, he's so fucking stupid -

And not just her, not just her and her family, every last one, ones he'd met as a kid to the ones he'd left the whip with, trusted with everything when it wasn't even their responsibility wasn't their burden but they'd still promised him they'd do what was right, because they were good people, and, and, all the others he'd never met across the world and all the ones before and before throughout time and - "Everyone in the past and everyone in the future."

He can't even comprehend the number.

"Belmont."

That can't be right.

"Belmont," the Sypha who does not know how horribly wrong she is tells him, "really, it's okay."

_it's okay it's okay it's okay Trevor it's fine it's okay it'll be okay please Trevor you have to_

Can't be right.

"If Dracula killed all of you, no one new could go to Hell," Trevor realizes.

Sypha sucks in a breath.

"And Dracula is evil. So whatever he's doing is evil, so it must work some other way. I must be missing -" And he almost falls down from the relief of it. "Jesus. Right. The, the Harrowing of Hell, he lets out everyone who's there just for not knowing about him. So Speakers go to Hell but then you meet Jesus and he lets you out again."

"That's not how -"

"Shut up, Arn," Sypha hisses.

"I know, you think other stuff," Trevor says. "That's, see that's why it makes sense, it wouldn't be right for people to be in Hell forever over an honest mistake."

"But that's not what your own Church thinks," the especially talkative one protests. "I've learned about this -"

"Eh, so they're wrong." No one looks particularly impressed by this reasoning but Trevor's entire point here is that they don't believe it so unlike Trevor, they're only going to Hell for a visit and they'll be right back out once Jesus explains he's real, and actually real not the Speakers' so-technically-we-believe-someone-named-Jesus-existed hair-splitting bullshit. Hopefully they'll all have the sense not to do that to Jesus' face, but Jesus would probably forgive them. That's the guy's thing. "Well," Trevor adds, "I know it doesn't matter to you but I am really glad I worked that out."

Huh, so that's what Sypha's _what the fuck _expression looks like echoed across the rest of her family's faces. Kind of sweet.

Which is to say, "Right, good talking with you," and he gets up, heads outside, and splatters the dirt with several cups worth of boiled water with chay bits in it.

"And that's why you said you didn't want to eat anything," Sypha observes.

"It seemed like how things were going," Trevor tells her. "Which is unfair. I mean I realize of things to go unfairly wrong this is small but I only threw up once last time and it was after I'd tracked down what's left of alcohol around here. Tasted like piss from a dead horse that'd been fermented in another, deader horse."

"Uh-huh."

"I thought after the first bottle I'd be drunk enough the second would taste better. It did not. The third was worse somehow."

"Maybe you threw up because you drank three bottles at once."

"Technically," he informs her, "It was only after two and a half. Then I drank half a bottle given that was all the alcohol I had left on hand."

He's not even looking at her but he can hear the judgement in her expression.

He tells her, "You should go back in already."

"Why?"

Because you're not going to see them again. "Because you're not going to see them again." Wait fuck - fuck fuck fuck - "Anytime soon," he tries, like she didn't just hear the obvious, incriminating gap between the two sentences. "I mean you've always been traveling with family and you'll miss them when you split up and -" He groans. "You know, the sad thing, this is still going better than the first time."

She eyes him. "What did you do the first time?"

"Nothing." Well, nothing followed by her telling him to do something and him telling her that all he could do about it was try to keep her alive and when she didn't find that good enough either that hey maybe they'd both all die so none of them would be sad and wasn't that all tempting fucking fate. He'd wonder what he'd been thinking but the answer was also pretty much _nothing_.

"And I miss them terribly?" she asks, sounding as much curious as concerned.

"Well... I… You were worried about missing them at the start, but you weren't, miserable. After. I don't think. I'm pretty sure. Maybe you didn't tell me because I was, and am, really fucking shit at this. But you told me a lot of stuff anyway so I. I think you missed them a regular amount." It occurs to Trevor that he has absolutely no frame of reference for what a regular amount might be. The people he knows are just straight dead. And worse, the person who'd actually know things like that, who was supposed to handle people and their feelings, was Sypha, but he'd never asked what it'd been like when she left her father for her grandfather's caravan because that wasn't the sort of thing you ask people.

He almost says that she'd laughed, a lot, and smiled even more, and why would she pretend like that for him. And he's almost sure that's true.

But what if she would. What if this Sypha tells him with her face and her voice that's exactly what she'd do.

No. Better not to say.

"They're fine," he says. "They're fine, we were just busy." And he clambers onto the roof in the hopes that he can escape any further conversation.

"What are you doing now?" she demands.

"It's, it's a good vantage point."

"So were you lying about the Night Horde?"

"Just about sleeping," he says. "Today - tonight - happens to be a bad time for that. For me." He generally just falls asleep and wakes up with time passed but none of the drama, but for whatever reason, that hadn't been true this night. He didn't even remember what he was dreaming about, which somehow always manages to be worse than when he does. All he knew was he kept waking up sick with dread and no thanks, God, he's full up on that.

"And you'll be not sleeping on the roof because…"

"Because I'm very tired and about to be very, very bored. Getting some use out of the weather. And..." He considers. "You know, uh, some people, might have somewhat heretical beliefs about God. And I don't know if they're right about that, but I do know now that God hates me personally."

"Somewhat heretical?" Sypha says, sounding more amused than anything.

God, fuck off, like he's supposed to know how heresy's ranked. "The Night Horde doesn't really show up but… You know those dreams where nothing's _gone_ wrong but everything's _going _wrong, and you're running around but then the problem's somewhere else. And it's not how it really went, and I _know_ that there can't just be more out of nowhere, I know it's impossible, but it doesn't matter. If I know something bad doesn't happen and I relax then maybe it will, but if I know that means it will then it won't, but..." He gestures helplessly.

Sypha considers him. "'With men it is impossible, but not with God; for all things be possible with God'?"

He shudders. "So I'm on the right track with this. Fucking great."

"So you fear your information can't be trusted. If everything keeps going as you remember it instead, will that prove otherwise?"

"It'll prove God's waiting for me to think things are fine before everything..." Well, it can't go to Hell when you're there already. "...falls apart," he finishes.

Sypha's quiet for a bit. "We could test it," she suggests. "Court frostbite later and come inside for now. See if demons show up."

"If demons show up people will die, Sypha."

"Can't they only show up if none of this is real?"

"I already know it's not real. Look, I have important roof stuff to do anyway."

"Really," she says.

"Really."

"And that would be…"

"See, I know how you guys all feel about _writing_," he says. "Or right now, anyway, you'll realize I'm right later."

"I find that doubtful."

"Of course you do, that's how realizing stuff later works."

"Perhaps," she says thoughtfully, "you were confused by me being nice. It's not like we hate writing."

"You totally do."

"Oh, we do not."

"I told - well, I didn't, but originally, you guys said I was a liar because I said my dad had gotten into a fistfight with a Speaker, because you'd all never, but believed me as soon as I said the fistfight was about writing down stuff Speakers knew."

Sypha considers. "...I wouldn't punch someone over that."

"You can shoot fire, yeah. But you don't know how many books there are. Point I was making, Belmonts write all the shit down." And yeah, Speakers are better at memorization, he'll acknowledge that's a valid skill, but also a lot of it is... Speakers learn from other people who've memorized it first and can set them straight if any bits are wrong while they're trying to get it to stick. Without that, when it's just you on your own running through your own memories over and over…things get muddled easy, when it's just you. That's why you write it down as soon as you can, before the details can get away from you, and then you try to memorize that. "And I think maybe I'm on the right track with this Dracula-based morality system thing too. You can't trust the Church to know how things work, this whole fucking mess proves that, but Dracula is reliably always evil and he's done a ton of stuff. Big stuff, petty stuff, all of it. I mean," Trevor continues, "it's not just he's a torturing mass murderer who literally drinks the blood of innocents. He's incredibly shallow, for example." You'd think someone ready to burn the world over the world burning one person would've been a bit less of an asshole to her at least, but no, not _fucking Dracula_ apparently. There'd been portraits of a blonde woman Trevor assumed was Lisa everywhere in the fucking disaster labyrinth Dracula called a castle and in not one had she actually looked aged, even as they chronicled the many, many decades of Alucard's journey at her side from a tiny chubby-fisted idiot brat all the way to the full sized idiot brat he looked like in the present. "I bet I can make a list of everything I know about Dracula and anything that's not mentioned God doesn't mind."

Sypha sighs. "Fine. Just don't interrogate Alucard about this when he gets back."

"I already know more about Alucard than I ever wanted," Trevor tells her. "You've heard the kind of shit he says without even realizing he's saying it. The last thing I want is to hear more."

Sypha rolls her eyes at him but at least drops it and heads out of sight.

Trevor's not sure how much good the list will do him personally, but might be useful to someone else, if he ever gets the chance. Especially since if anyone's summoning him it'll be a Belmont and that fucking deacon was probably full of shit but the idea Belmonts are damned is still bothering him like a splinter he can't shake.

Obviously he knows it can't be all of them. Emmi was only around for, what, a couple months between Lena bringing the idiot home - how hard is it to remember to tell people you're five, not four, Christ - and dying of whooping cough. God's not going to send a four year old to Hell over a couple months and a tombstone with Belmont chiseled on it. But who qualifies as enough of a Belmont? Like, does Simon get off on account of being such a complete fuckup who never should've been one, sure he was the firstborn son and Lord Belmont for a couple years but if the Church didn't compare unfavorably to a box of imaginary oat-eating dicks he would've been shipped to a monastery, God, so whose fault is that? Whose fault is it that Simon's dead at all when no one even wanted him to be a Belmont and if their parents could've just gotten rid of him he'd still -

He doesn't know how it works and probably some stupid ass who accused him of being a fucking gjenganger doesn't know either.

Still. Writing things down is worth a shot. He has absolutely nothing better to do. And that he's going to feel like such an idiot if he gets the chance to pass things on and then once it's done and he's back in Hell he realizes he forgot something, like the whole poison cloth because vampires are just such pricks they wear poison sometimes business.

Maybe that's what God wants from him, anyway? Maybe there'll be a miracle and his ghost can just hand everything he wrote over.

He doesn't give himself frostbite. How badly does Sypha think of him? He's spent years sleeping outside, if he didn't know what he was doing he wouldn't have fingers left for anyone to worry about. His hands are barely the wrong side of numb by the time he's put down everything he can think of, and he stuffs them under his armpits and settles in for a night of boredom.

Some birds fly across the moon. Eventually, an owl hoots, but not anywhere close. Shame, because it'd be kind of hilarious to catch one and present it to Alucard, see if he tries to interrogate a dumb animal. No magical animals of any kind show up for a secret meeting with Trevor. It's just a regular night.

Oh, he should put down the magic animal spy issue. Just because Alucard's wrong doesn't mean it's not true. And crows, probably it's not just vampires that can talk to crows...

"Belmont."


	21. Hot

"Belmont."

Trevor does not, exactly, jump, but that's got significantly more to do with the fact he's half frozen than he'd like. He does fumble his journal and end up juggling it for a moment before regaining his grip. Then he twists around and snarls, "You fucking prick! Are you that - arg!" He throws up his hands. "I could ambush you too if I felt like it! This doesn't prove anything!"

"My apologies," Alucard says in the least apologetic way possible.

"Fuck you!"

"I was curious about your startle response."

"I'll stab you in your fucking smug face, how's that for my fucking response!"

"Normal," Alucard says.

Trevor kicks at Alucard's knee. Alucard flickers a foot back.

"It's a legitimately useful diagnostic criteria."

"It hurts your stupid ego that much to think I'm not scared of you?" God, he can't believe he kept his mouth shut all night,_ even when he saw several cats_, because he mistakenly gave half a shit about Alucard's stupid paranoia.

"You've made it very clear you're not scared of me."

"And it pisses you off."

"No," Alucard lies.

"You're such a fucking liar," Trevor tells him.

"I don't like the context," Alucard says. "I don't like that this was done to you, and whoever else."

"Whoever else?" Trevor repeats. "What, now there's more of us?"

"From how you're acting with Sypha, they're all dead."

"Everyone I know is dead for normal reasons," Trevor says. "And none of it was to vampires, different monsters." They don't get credit for Letty, if you get killed because you're mostly dead from fever thanks to fucking weretigers it's the fucking weretiger's point.

Not that dying to _enough_ vampires is anything to be ashamed about. Just doesn't come up much. It's rare there's that many vampires in one place and when there are it's obvious there's way too many and that going straight in would be s-

A light flares on the ground. Unnecessarily dramatic - it's still dark-ish, but it's close enough to dawn you can see well enough. "Oh, Alucard's back," Sypha says. "I'm going back to sleep. Stop yelling."

"It's Alucard's fault!"

"I'm sure," she mumbles. "Stop yelling."

She goes back inside. There is, perhaps, an entire minute of silence, and then Alucard asks, "Why are you on the roof?"

Right. "I didn't say anything to anything," Trevor starts. "Nothing has been said on this roof until you got here. Except for talking to Sypha when I climbed up originally," he amends. "But otherwise, nothing. So you have nothing to complain about."

"You felt compelled to separate yourself from Sypha and stay awake while everyone else slept, despite your original intention of -"

"No, that was me lying," Trevor interrupts. "I figured I'd have a bad time of it if I tried to sleep, but I said that stuff so you'd leave and..." Is he not supposed to mention it? "...Do stuff," he finishes after a hopefully none too suspicious pause. "The stuff you needed to do. And Sypha needed sleep. But I didn't say anything, at all, while I was up here so I couldn't have accidentally been passing messages to whoever you're worried about. Not even to the black cat I saw!"

"Black cats aren't magic."

"I know they're not magic! They're _friendly_ and if I _said something_ it'd probably _come over. _But instead of getting to pet a cat I sat in dead fucking silence up here."

Alucard appears to be weighing this. "Thank you."

"It was an enormous sacrifice."

"I thought you liked dogs."

"You can like both!"

"Cats aren't deformed, inappropriate morons, though," Alucard says. "I assumed that was what you liked about them."

Trevor stares at him for a second, then _inappropriate_ clicks into place and he howls with laughter. "You - you really are the stuck up kind of dog," he manages eventually. "Too good for a nose up your ass?"

"The dogs are all yours," Alucard says graciously. "You might be a bit rank for them, though. I'd suggest finding something particularly rotten and rolling in it in the hopes the juices will cover the smell. Perhaps then you'll manage to get lucky with a dog possessing abysmally low standards."

"As Sypha explained, sex with animals is wrong because man is divine."

"_Then why am I…?_"

"It's not bestiality if you're literally a dog."

"That makes no sense."

"Does so," Trevor says.

Sypha lands on the side of the roof. "You are_ so loud_," she tells them.

Trevor considers apologizing. Sypha, being not real, doesn't really need sleep. Yeah, he's good.

She ignites another flame in her hand. It really isn't dark enough to need that and - and he just wishes she wouldn't. It doesn't look right. It wavers and jumps about like she's going to collapse and he knows it's just she's not as practiced but it just. It's like she's going to collapse.

"So!" Sypha says, and he tears his eyes away from the flame. "Speaking of that. You can transform," Sypha says to Alucard.

"Into a dog."

"I really want to see," Sypha explains.

Alucard eyes her with extremely valid distrust. "No."

"Belmont, why won't Alucard do this one little thing?"

"Probably because it's fucked up looking. Vampires don't transform like most monsters, it's a spell and he's got to actually make the shape. Stands to reason there's something really wrong with whatever he turns into since Alucard apparently loves hobbies he's bad at."

"You said you approved of his wolfy feet," Sypha says.

"I did not say I _approved_. I just said they weren't leaving werewolf tracks. He turned into a dog just once, in the middle of the fight at the castle," Trevor explains. "Ran around, stepped in blood, left some pawprints, tore someone's throat out, turned back, never mentioned it again. I didn't have time to wonder about that but now I'm sure it's because he knows to be ashamed of how bad his stuck-up dog impression is. He was mostly fur," Trevor adds.

"Alucard! Are you fluffy?!"

Trevor continues, "Probably to hide how deformed everything under it was."

"It is not," Alucard says petulantly. "_Actual wolves_ found me convincing. You don't even know what wolves are."

"Why do you want Alucard to be a dog, though?" Trevor asks. "You don't hate stuck up devil dogs any less than you do regular ones."

"Well, obviously if it's Alucard I don't need to worry he'll bite me," Sypha says, which is so backward it's insulting.

"I can't believe you think stuck-up _vampire_ devil dogs are less bitey than regular nice ones."

"Alucard, if you turn into a real wolf and I can see it's a wolf and not a dog, I'll make Belmont stop calling you one."

"God Himself will not make me stop," Trevor says. "Because I am right."

"Don't you want to prove Belmont's wrong?" Sypha says, all sweetness.

"Pretty clear which of us is right and which of us is lying about how shoddy his dog impression is."

"Fine," Alucard snaps, and - haha, oh, he changes but then jumps straight up before Sypha's attempt to shove her hand into his fur can connect. Did Alucard actually see that coming for once or did he just vampire-reflex his way out of it?

Dog-Alucard changes back into Regular-Alucard, still floating.

"I didn't get to see!" Sypha objects.

"You don't see with your hands," Alucard says.

"How are my eyes supposed to know if your fur is any good?"

"Why do your eyes need to know that?"

"You're not fun at all," she whines.

"Thank you," he says, with even for him exaggerated graciousness. He floats back down to sit on the rooftop again. He puts his hands on his knees and - wait.

"How many pairs of gloves do you have?" Trevor asks. "Do you have spares of everything? How many salamanders is that?"

"Hm? No, these are the same ones."

Alucard bit the glove in half, Trevor saw it. So, what, did he sit down there and stitch them back up? If Alucard knows how to actually stitch things and he still let Sypha have free rein on Trevor's head Trevor is going to be royally pissed. He grabs for the glove, which doesn't have stitches in it and he touches Alucard's freezing wrist in the process and -

"What the fuck, Alucard?" he shouts, jerking back.

"Are you just going to shout at everything you notice?" Alucard asks.

"I - did you - what the fuck is wrong with you!" Trevor shrieks. "Did you forget what you were supposed to be doing! You are the worst vampire to ever live!"

"What?"

"Belmont, I have to agree, what's the problem?" Sypha says.

He grabs her arm and smacks her palm down on Alucard's face. "See?"

"Why are you doing this?" Alucard asks.

"Alucard is...here on the roof? Not an illusion?"

"His skin is cold!"

"I am a vampire, Belmont. We've been through this."

Sypha pulls her hand back, looking even more baffled.

"It's not cold if they ate, which he should've done, that was the point of telling him to go down there by himself, only he didn't because he got distracted stitching up his stupid glove apparently!"

Alucard looks disgusted. "That is not how it works."

"Yes it is! Everyone knows that!"

"I have heard that..." Sypha agrees.

"See?"

"But before he was acting like..." Sypha trails off, because apparently _probably not even capable of handling stairs_ was not something she wanted Alucard to hear. Trevor should probably have mentioned -

"I heard your conversation," Alucard tells her. Well, that's taken care of. "Again, I am a vampire."

"_Oh_. How...much?"

"Until Belmont started shouting about your dead brother and you both stayed quiet for a while."

Trevor watches as Sypha runs through the conversation with various looks of dismay, which is very much like how she'd looked last time she found this out. Then her expression turns murderous and -

"I forgot you didn't know!" Trevor says. "I told you - I told Sypha ages ago in the future. Also it's really his fault for eavesdropping." If it wasn't something vampires had to do on purpose, you'd never be able to get the drop on them. They have to know you're there and choose to keep listening, and shutting up or splitting up is usually enough to put a stop to it.

"Vampire," Alucard repeats again, like that's an excuse.

"Which is what we should actually be focusing on, the fact Alucard is too fucking braindead to remember he's a vampire when it actually matters!"

"I don't understand why you'd expect this," Alucard says.

"Why I would expect you to be capable of feeding yourself!" Trevor agrees. "Why would I expect you to make literally any attempt to not fucking die!"

"It has been several days now, and you really did look like you hurt yourself earlier," Sypha says. "And you said that dhampirs can't go a long time without eating like Belmont claimed."

"I'd only become fevered," Alucard spits, "if I grossly overate, and I have no idea why this would be _expected_ of me because however _childish_ it's something only turned vampires could possibly think is a good idea. This is the temperature I'm supposed to be and I don't see why anyone would expect dhampirs to be delusional about that the way turned vampires are."

"Maybe the reason Alucard thinks dhampirs have to eat constantly is because he doesn't know how eating works," Trevor tells Sypha. "Maybe I was right about dhampirs, maybe I'm the expert on everything, and Alucard is just fucking insane and can't be trusted farther than you can't throw him. Vampires do work like this, it's why you can't just go _oh this one doesn't feel like a frozen corpse I guess they're a normal upstanding member of society and had nothing to do with the body everyone just found._"

Alucard looks like he's about to go on another rant but then pauses and considers him. "Do you remember being told that?"

"How could I know something I wasn't told?"

"Do you remember who told you that, then? A specific person or time?"

"Yeah? Every older member of the family bitched about it at least once and also it's written in the bestiary what with it being pretty damn important to know."

"So this is something Belmonts learn," Alucard decides, because apparently that was in question.

"Why the fuck would a vampire or demon or angry owl tell me about how vampires that just ate are better at pretending not to be vampires?"

"It's _over_eating! The excess magic that can't be metabolized bleeds off as heat," Alucard says. "It's like eating a meal only to throw it up again only it lasts longer and it feels disgusting the whole time and I would sooner light myself on fire!"

Christ in Heaven Alucard is so dramatic about everything.

Sypha says, "Does that work?"

What?

"Yes."


	22. Pets

"It's not like I do it that often," claims the person who Trevor has repeatedly seen very nearly climb into the fireplace and that's really sounding now like it wasn't accidental as Sypha continues to interrogate Alucard about the fact he apparently did mean he preferred setting himself on fire more than drinking one extra drop of blood. More evidence for dhampirs, or maybe just Alucard, being so unspeakably annoying to raise that even Dracula couldn't handle a second one. "It's why I wear gloves."

Obviously that's why vampires wear gloves and such when out and about pretending to be people! It's still fucked up that Alucard thinks literally setting himself on fire is a viable plan B. If Trevor had known this was the sort of brilliant problem solving his shitty vampire mind came up with, he would have put a lot more effort into actually talking through their plans. What did Alucard think the backup plan for fighting Dracula was, stabbing themselves? No wonder Alucard got the shit beaten out of him as soon as he was out of Trevor's line of sight. In fact, did Alucard even get the shit beaten out of him? Did he just beat the shit out of himself?

Still, good to know. Vampires, or at least dhampirs, not only can cheat with fire magic but think that's less weird than just being a normal temperature by eating a normal-for-vampires meal. Trevor pulls out his journal again and jots this down.

Alucard leans slightly to see. "That's not what I said."

Trevor adds, _And they're pedantic assholes about how you phrase things. If disarmed, talk so you can die knowing you pissed them off._

"Weren't you paying attention when I told Sypha? Vampires aren't good at this kind of magic."

"We know you're completely awful at it, yeah."

"Vampires as a whole, not just me. My father is the only vampire who bothered with it and it's only because he was affronted to discover there was such a distinction between vampire and human magics. It's why he came to focus his research exclusively on the sciences."

"And upon hearing you'd suck at it you knew to add it to your list of hobbies, because you're only interested in things you're terrible at," Trevor says. That does make sense.

Sypha frowns at him, because nothing is ever fair. "Alucard looked like a perfectly good wolf."

"Yeah, well, you had to bully him into that and he immediately turned person-shaped again so that just proves my point that Alucard only _wants_ to do stuff he's utter shit at it. If he was worse at making a dog -"

"Not a dog," Alucard mutters.

"- he'd be one all the time. We'd have woken up a dog shedding all over the fancy coffin, if we could even tell whatever fucked up pile of bones and fur Alucard made was supposed to be a dog."

Sypha bounces the flame in her hand and then finally, finally is satisfied by dawn and puts the damn thing out. "That reminds me…Alucard, if you think God didn't make dogs," Sypha says, "then who do you think did?"

Alucard says, "I respect your opinions."

"Oh, come on, you can tell me, I hate dogs too! We outnumber Belmont." Alucard doesn't respond. "Belmont. Dogs: awful, awful animals, don't you think?"

"They're great. Platonically and nonsexually great," he adds, giving Alucard a meaningful glare.

"What a very normal thing to say," Sypha says. "We all believe you."

Trevor ignores that to continue, "God definitely made them. They don't eat people."

"They bite people all the time!"

"But they're not vampires, Sypha, biting's not eating." Admittedly, he's seen some scavenge corpses, but he's not going to judge, and better than wolves eating the bodies and turning into werewolves and then biting living people and making more werewolves and so on. "It's not like they - well, actually, Alucard ran around with his magic sword when he was a dog -"

"A wolf," Sypha says, because she is a goddamn traitor.

"- but regular non-Alucard dogs just have their teeth. If they want to do anything it's mouths or nothing."

Sypha shudders because she also likes being dramatic over nothing. "Mouths full of slobbery tongues."

"For all you screamed about it not one of my fingers got bitten off." Of course, this is before that happened, so she'll have to take his word for it. He insists, "It's cute. You'd realize it was cute if you stopped thinking they were going to tear your hand off."

"They do that because that's something you _wanted_ dogs to do?" Alucard says, apparently appalled for some idiot vampire reason. Maybe vampires are weak to dog spit. "I thought it was all the inbreeding."

"Oh, so stuck-up dogs are too good to do that?"

"Wolves don't lick random parts of your body!"

"So that's proof those are the Satan ones. The ones that are good are the original kind God made for us."

"Maybe Satan made dogs," Sypha counters.

"You don't believe in Satan. You can't pretend to believe in Satan to win an argument."

"We believe in an adversarial -" Sypha starts.

"You believe in calling God's right hand man 'Satan' because Speakers like being really annoying and making conversations a chore. No one made you use the same word for your not-at-all-Satan-who's-working-for-God-because-they-both-hate-us. I'm not even saying you're wrong God's got someone like that! How the fuck would I know! But I'm talking about _actual_ Satan and you know it."

"Alucard," Sypha says, "did Satan make dogs to spy on humanity because so many humans are stupid and think dogs are nice and don't suspect them?"

"Alucard," Trevor counters, realizing that actually, he can completely win this argument, "are you actually just pretending to hate Godly dogs because you're like that fox who can't reach the delicious, delicious grapes? And before you answer, I saw your precious stuffed dog toy."

Alucard groans. "Dogs. Are domesticated wolves. _You_ made them. Badly."

"You mean, like pigs?" Sypha asks.

"And geese and cats," Alucard says.

Trevor points out, "Cats are wild animals."

"How could they possibly -"

"Also, don't change the subject."

"This is what we're talking about," Sypha tells him.

"No, we're talking about how Alucard had a fluffy toy dog in his room so he secretly agrees with me that dogs are great and is just mad he never had any pets so you're wrong because we outnumber you."

Alucard stares at him in shock. So, he's totally right.

"I did have pets," Alucard says instead, sounding badly thrown. "I'm… I would have thought that was commonly known. People died."

What. "How fucking bad are you at pets!" Trevor shouts. "What is with you and picking hobbies you're the worst at? You don't even have the excuse of just being bad at everything, this is deliberate! Were you keeping like, like hellhounds, no, hell_wolves_? Wait." Aw shit. "Were the skinned things really yours and you just lied when we asked if Sypha burned your pets because you didn't want her to feel bad?"

"You think I _skinned_ my _pets_," Alucard says with the exact same mixture of disgust and disdain as he did when Trevor brought it up last time.

"It's not like I just _assumed _you'd do that. Some undead dogs and cats attacked us at the castle. They must've belonged to one of the vampires there, you'd been a vampire who lived there. It's reasonable to check!"

"Vampires don't keep undead animals." Under their continued stares, Alucard sighs. "Bats. When I was younger."

"So it's not owls, it's bats vampires like," Trevor says. One mystery solved.

"No," Alucard says sourly. "Vampires do not like bats, it turned out."

Dracula murdered Alucard's pet bats.

Huh. You'd really think Alucard would remember shit like pet murder when trying to brag he had the better childhood. Then again, Alucard was just insisting ice ghosts are fine because if you stay far enough away, their inevitable murder attempts won't actually succeed. Alucard's judgement is shit. Which is understandable when you're raised by Dracula, admittedly, and also understandable when you're a complete moron.

Also, "Wait, how did Dracula killing your bats get people killed?"

Alucard stares at him.

Time to guess then! "Dracula got other people to murder your bats because your mother made him promise not to kill them himself, but your horrible monster bats killed most of them back?" Alucard keeps staring. "Dracula dumped your horrible monster bats on a nearby town to get them out of the castle. Dracula was so enraged he had to follow up the bat murder with human murder to relax. Dracula -"

"He did not hurt my bats. We collected them together. They were -" Alucard cups his hands together to create a mouse-sized hollow. "Just bats. An unusual species, but there was nothing supernatural about them. And I vaccinated - they were completely harmless to humans."

And that's… "Uh," Trevor says. "When you say they weren't supernatural, do you mean like Dracula's bullshit pile of stuck-together floating castles isn't supernatural?"

"They were ordinary animals."

"Are they the 'ordinary animal' bats in that magic book about magic bats you had?" Trevor asks.

Alucard considers him. "What would you consider a magic book?"

"Weird picture runes instead of real letters."

Alucard's expression disappears.

So the book's important, then.

"Right, that magic bat book, the one in your room. Also, those didn't look like any bats I'd ever seen."

"It wasn't a magic book, those weren't weird runes, and I caught the bats in a jungle on the other side of the world." Alucard claims, both looking away and ducking his head. Then, "That was a book I wrote about them."

"But there's legible drawings in it. Good, even. That's how I know it was about bats, I could actually make out what the fuck the pictures were supposed to be... Alucard, did you kidnap someone to draw for you? _Did Dracula lock some poor guy up in his dungeons because you wanted illustrations?_"

"No," Alucard says flatly.

Yeah, if his mother didn't want the people who actually murdered her to face consequences she probably wouldn't have let Dracula torture art out of some innocent guy. Probably.

Which leaves... "So did Dracula draw those? Did you make Dracula draw pictures of your stupid pet bats?" Trevor's intense desire to mock this further slams into the horrifying picture of Dracula doing something other than murdering people. Whoops. He should really take his own advice about mouths and shutting them.

Alucard does not seem to be really listening. "I wonder if you actually saw it," he mutters, casting a very quick glance at Trevor again.

"I just told you what it looks like."

"I can't believe they'd have difficulty figuring out what I wrote. If they described it to you I'm sure they wouldn't have been able to keep from editorializing." Alucard sounds very irritable about this. So whatever's there is hugely embarrassing. Maybe Trevor should've tried harder on the apparently not magic cipher.

Wait. Holy shit. "Is it poetry?" Trevor asks. "Is it poetry about how majestic you think bats are."

"Bats aren't majestic," Alucard says.

"Mean thing to say about your pets."

Sypha says, "Is it poetry about how cute bats are?"

"It was a record of my observations, not poetry."

"Ones so embarrassing you had to write it in code." How bad does something have to be before vampires get embarrassed? Did Alucard fuck the bats? Is it a bat-fucking journal? Is it a journal of bat-fucking poems? Maybe Trevor was spared by not being able to read the entries.

"Just because you can't read something doesn't make it code," Alucard tells him. "I wrote it in the language of the people where the bats are from."

Trevor considers this. "Why the fuck," he decides on.

"It was the language where they lived. Not one they spoke because they were, again, ordinary non-supernatural bats. But I felt it was more fitting to use that for them than a foreign language."

"It's not and you're weird."

Alucard sighs. "I suppose it doesn't matter."

"Also, I may not be able to read it but I know what writing from the other side of the world looks like and even if your penmanship is as bad as your drawing skill, that was definitely not Chinese."

"I didn't mean the other side of this continent."

"Oh! Africa has special bats?" Sypha asks. "I've heard they have a lot of strange animals."

Alucard shakes his head. "It's a separate continent. I'm not sure how to… If you were to head to the west, you reach the ocean. If you continued to sail west, you'd reach land again."

"I'd be dead because that's, what...twenty..." He glances at Sypha questioningly and gets a nod. "Yeah, twenty thousand miles. I suppose the boat itself might make it to run aground on land," Trevor says. "In China. These were absolutely supernatural monster bats you summoned, weren't they."

"There's other continents."

"What would the point of that be?" Trevor asks. "God's not going to make peopleless copies of all this just to fill it with bats. Bats aren't even that great."

Alucard snaps, "I already said there were people."

"That was before you tried to say those people were on some mythical other continent nobody's been to."

"Well obviously the people there have been to it!"

"There can't be," Sypha says. "I have heard speculation about the possibility of other landmasses, but for God to have created humans more than once…" She shakes her head. "I can't believe that. If they didn't fall, then would they even be human? And if they did, if the same thing happened to them as happened to Eve and then Adam, then it was all just a perverse trap. Even for God, that seems terribly cruel."

"Also, Jesus," Trevor adds, because God knows Sypha won't be considering that part of it. "Like, I guess he could get there, who am I to say what Jesus couldn't do, but what the fuck would he have to say to them? They didn't crucify the guy."

"Most of us didn't crucify anyone," Sypha retorts.

Trevor groans. "Look I don't know how it works, don't argue with me."

"What are you both talking about?" Alucard demands.

"There's not other continents because there's no point in things existing without humans and there's no humans on them because if there were they wouldn't be from Eden and if they're a separate unrelated batch then what's even the point of Jesus," Trevor tells him.

"Of course they - you're all the same species," Alucard says in a tone of voice that suggests he's never spoken to anyone so stupid. "How could there possibly be unrelated humans, that's not how - you can't have _unrelated _members of the _same species_ -" Trevor watches with some amusement as Alucard actually pauses to take a breath before continuing curtly, "The oceans were lower in the past, rendering the continent more accessible, and also boats do exist. But in one respect, you are correct."

"Wow, one. Thanks."

"I didn't speak with anyone on that subject but I'd imagine they would find your story of Jesus rather perplexing and dull," Alucard continues. "Still, you might like it there."

Surrounded by godless damned people. Fuck, God, that's a mean thing to say.

"My father was unsure if it was some deliberate working of magic or not, but he said there was a wrongness to the soil. Those exposed to vampirism do not successfully transform. It's rather violent, apparently."

"And where would I find this great anti-vampire dirt? Like, an actual physical location."

"West," Alucard says. "And south. It's not as if I went by boat, I think I've made my feelings on those clear. I don't know the precise distance. That's not how the castle works."

"Right, so, you got demon bats and Dracula lied to you about it for some reason."

"Why those bats?" Sypha asks. "There's bats here."

"They had some traits that interested me," Alucard says with a hesitance that suggests he absolutely knows that is not actually answering the question and he absolutely knows Sypha knows it.

Well, Trevor's great at helping. "They had fucked up monster teeth," Trevor volunteers. "Assuming the artist got it right, and they weren't Alucard so I'm willing to believe they did. Like extra fangs, but bucktoothed. Maybe he just wanted something around with stupider teeth than him. Which raises the question, how did your freakish bucktoothed flying mice kill people, Alucard? Do they fly down people's throats and stab their organs? Tiny torture demons?"

"They were very nice animals," Alucard says stubbornly.

"Your judgement is shit," Trevor points out.

"When I said people I wasn't referring to humans," Alucard says. "Vampires died. I assume that's acceptable to you."

"That just raises further questions!"

"I would also like to know how your tiny bats killed vampires," Sypha says. "Venom?"

"Their venom wasn't -" Alucard slumps. "They were blood-drinking bats," he mutters.

"Vampire bats?!" Trevor shouts.

"And I tried to explain that there was a difference -"

"You made bats into vampires?!"

"- and that they were regular animals - "

"I didn't think animals could even be vampires!"

"- and only humans can become vampires -"

"There are no ordinary bats that drink blood! I would know something that fucked up!"

"- but no one wanted to listen to me," Alucard finishes.

"And then the vampires exploded from how wrong you were?"

Alucard regards him. "That's...more or less how it went, yes."

"I knew it!"

"I do not believe you," Sypha says. "If being wrong around vampires was enough, Belmont wouldn't need to carry any weapons."

"Fuck you Sypha, I am right about everything."

She gestures at Alucard. "See, Alucard is completely unharmed. Not even a sizzle."

"Miss Belnades?"

God. God fucking damn this place.

"Rozalia?" Sypha says. He already knows! Fucking Speakers and their fucking name fetish like he wanted to know who dead people were. "You don't need to call me -" She looks back at Trevor and frowns, then whispers, "She wasn't one of the people who…"

"Stayed inside," Trevor says.

Sypha smiles. "Oh, that's -"

"You think it went _better _for the people who stayed put," Trevor growls.

Sypha just ignores him. "Right, so just Sypha's fine," she tells the woman. "What's going wrong now?"

"They're going to burn the church this morning, as the Lord Belmont said to."

"For the record, I did not, I just agreed, and it's not a church anyway," Trevor says. "It's like a hemlock growing in the middle of a bunch of carrots. Just because I think we should burn some poison doesn't mean I've got anything against carrots, all right? Carrots are fine. Carrots are great, in fact."

"I don't mind about the church but I'm concerned about the fire spreading to other buildings," Rozalia interrupts. "Ones that matter. But you can make walls of ice if things get out of hand."

"I can," Sypha says, sounding only a little smug. "Yes, you've right, I'll come to keep an eye on things. Do we have time for breakfast? I think Belmont needs to eat something."

"I don't _need_ to eat something."

Rozalia fucking nods and says, "Because you're a gjenganger."

"I am fucking not!"

And Alucard makes a little choked off snort, like this is hilarious.

"I am not!" Trevor snarls at Alucard. "I didn't fucking kill myself!"

"Yes, yes, obviously you're not a gjenganger," Alucard says, rolling his eyes. "Gjengangers are coherent, and focused, and reliable, and _clean_. I don't understand how anyone could mistake you for one. "

Trevor flips him off. "A gjenganger would've gone berserk and killed you first time you disagreed with me."

"I have the sense not to directly refuse a gjenganger's request. As long as you do that they're perfectly pleasant conversationalists." Then the fucker gets a look of mild concern as he looks down to Rozalia. "Do none of you know these things about them, really?"

"Er," Rozalia says.

"How do you deal with them safely, then?"

"_They're_ not safe!" Trevor yells. "What the fuck is with you, they're horrible vengeance monsters who kill you if you won't help out with it!"

"Of course basic civility would strike you as impossible."

"Basic civility," Trevor repeats mockingly. "Basic civility!"

"On second thought," Sypha says to Rozalia, dropping to the ground, "I think it would be best we leave them here."

"Basic civility!"


End file.
